LES Channel Developed Flow

8/17/2014
simulation of fully-developed turbulent flow in a square channel using by LES model | LinkedIn
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simulation of fully-developed turbulent flow in a square channel

using by LES model
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Mostafa Mahmoudi
RA at Shahrood University of Technology
Follow Mostafa
Hi everybody,
I'm trying to simulate a fully-developed turbulent flow in a square channel using LES
model. I'm working with OpenFOAM and I could valid the solver by solving the
turbulent flow between to parallel plate (Moser et al., 1999: doi: 10.1063/1.869966).
But now, I wanna solve it in a square channel and it results wrong solution.
For reaching a fully-developed flow I mapped the velocity profile in a plane near the
outlet to inlet and let it solve till I get a fully developed condition. but when I'm using
Smagorinsky model, the secondary flows are decreasing in magnitude and when I
used the One Equation model, they reached a constant value but in order of 1e-3,
according to my bulk velocity (U_b=16.155) they should be about 0.4. and also the
<u'^2>, <v'^2> and <w'^2> which are the fluctuating velocities averaged in space and
time are in order of 1e-6 which they should have an order of 1e-2!
does anyone know where is the problem?
any hints or tips would be appreciated
Regards,
Mostafa
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Matteo Ghelfi
CFD Analyst at TWT GmbH
which kind of boundary condition are you using? how big / long ist your domain?
Matteo
Like Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 11 days ago

Mostafa Mahmoudi
Mostafa
in OpenFOAM and for my first case I used mapped bc for inlet and inletOutlet for outlet patch and
applied pisoFoam solver. the domain is a 0.01*0.01*2Pi channel and Re_bulk=5810 and
Re_tau=360 (I tried it with 1*1*2Pi domain, also, but the same results I got). The interesting point
is that the Re_tau that the solver calculates is about 364 and has a good confirmation with the
paper I wanna valid my work with that. And also the mean streamwise velocity profile is as same
as the paper's.
in another case I used cyclic bcs for both inlet and outlet and applied ChannelFoam (OF-2.1.0)
solver. in this case the secondary flows were very weak, but for both cases the shape of
secondary flow streamlines was as same as the paper.
Hiroaki Nishikawa
Associate Research Fellow (NIA)
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Matteo Ghelfi
Matteo
inletOutlet means you are appling a periodicity? if yes than you simulate an infinitive long
domain... but how can you keep a constant bulk velocity? are you using some kind of
acceleration force? if the flow is free and not accelerated the friction will slow down it
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Mostafa Mahmoudi
Mostafa
let me explain more about my first case. consider a channel with a known length. at first, the inlet
has an uniform velocity value. when the channel is solved for a time step then the inlet velocity
replaced with the velocities on a plane near the outlet and so on .... so, after some time steps we
can achieve a fully-developed condition. it's a method to avoid solving the equations in a very long
channel.
in the 2nd case, I used a dynamic source term in momentum equation to make a constant bulk
velocity throughout the channel and the inlet and outlet are cyclic. I valid it with the paper I
mentioned in the main post. it's a common way to simulate fully-developed flows.
Mostafa Mahmoudi commented on a

discussion in Large Eddy Simulation
(LES) and High Fidelity CFD.
simulation of fully-developed turbulent
flow in a square channel using by LES
model Hi everybody, I'm trying to
simulate a fully-developed turbulent
flow in a square channel using LES
model. I'm working with OpenFOAM
and I could valid the solver by solving
the turbulent flow between... more
20h ago
Matteo Ghelfi
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Mostafa
ok, understood, sorry but I need to be sure about BC before start to think.... Seems to be ok. But
are you sure that your dynamic source term is not influencing the stream and dumping the
turbulence? I ask just because I also tried something like this but was not properly working near
the wall and the secondary flow was wrong influenced.
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thanks for your perusing the problem.

actually this source term is a pressure gradient that drives the flow and is adjusted dynamically to
maintain a constant mass flux through the channel.
I read it in several papers like the one aforementioned before.
Assume that the bulk velocity u need is Ubar. the procedure of applying such a dynamic pressure
gradient is as follows:
1- Extract the mean velocity in the flow direction. I say it magUbarStar.
2- Calculate the pressure gradient increment needed to adjust the average flow-rate to the correct
value (gradPplus=magUbar - magUbarStar).
3- add it as a body force to Navier-Stokes equation.
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Matteo

Matteo Ghelfi
Matteo
the source term is applied before or after the SGS viscosity is calculated and the viscosity
modified? during the iteration I mean. maybe the SGS visc is based on previous iteration velocity.
Other question. I do not read the paper you mentioned so maybe I miss something. I can the
source term keep the bulk velocity constant just without made failure? first is difficult find the cells
where velocity is bulk and where is not, second because of the turbulence you have fluctuations
on velocity and only after a relevant statistical time the mean velocity is bulk velocity.
Like (1) Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 10 days ago
Mostafa M. likes this
Mostafa Mahmoudi
Mostafa
First question:
here is the steps implemented in the solver:
1- the momentum eqn is solved
2- the PISO loop begins
3- the pressure gradient is calculated based on new velocities
4- the SGS viscosity is calculated
5- step 1.
so there is no reason that the fluctuating components of velocity have this small magnitude,
actually, there isn't any dissipating factor in solving procedure.
Second question:
nope, perhaps my explanation was weak that you picked the wrong thing. the pressure gradient
which is based on the (magUbar - magUbarStar) is applied as a body force and it doesn't need to
apply it just on some special cells. at first the value of this pressure gradient is high (depends on
the initial condition) and after a while the magUbarStar leads to magUbar and at this moment the
Next discussion
fully-developed flow will be started.
CFD in Combustion with
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10 days ago
turbulence
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8/17/2014
Alexandre Silva Lopes
Senior Research Fellow at CEsA (FEUP)
Alexandre
Does the Smagorinsky coefficient decrease near the walls? You are solving for a moderate/low
Re_tau; if you do not use some kind of damping to decrease the Smagorinsky coefficient, the
eddy viscosity will be too high and that can kill the turbulence and decrease the magnitude of the
secondary motions.
Do you know about a paper from Elias Balaras on the same subject? I do not have the reference
with me and I think the Re_tau is higher, but that can give you some help.
Matteo Ghelfi
Matteo
I think the problem could be the body force. If you apply a body force that accelerate the flux on
every cell of the domain all the vortex are dumped. the body force is applied differently on cells
containing different part of vortex; the par that have relative velocity greater than 0 is not
accelerated, the other one is accelerated, so the vortex is deformed and than destroyed. This
phenomena was exactly the one that I found during my research with the code written on my
institute.
Mostafa Mahmoudi
Mostafa
@Alexandre:
thanks for the comment. I'm using van Driest damping function. Also I used a dynamic
Smagorinsky model which provide an appropriate local value of the Smagorinsky coefficient, but
the results were the same.
about the secondary flow in my case, they didn't damp, they have a low magnitude. they should
be about 1%-3% of bulk velocity in magnitude but their magnitude is about 0.05% of bulk velocity.
the flow pattern is the same as the paper I'm trying to validate the code with it.
about the Balaras paper, I couldn't find the paper you mentioned, If you know the title of paper,
can you please let me know.
@Matteo:
thanks for your reply. At first I was thinking the same as you; but when I saw this method was
used in some papers I thought more and more and I found that this method is correct, because
we don't know the shape of velocity profile and this method actually is simulating what in actual
occurs when a flow is going to be fully-developed.
Do you know other ways to achieve a fully-developed flow? You have more experience than me in
this field.
Filippo Maria Denaro
Associate Professor at University
Filippo
Maria
Just for my curiosity, does your code converge towards the correct laminar solution for small Re
numer without any turbulence modelling?
Alexandre Silva Lopes

Senior Research Fellow at CEsA (FEUP)
Alexandre
Elias Balaras paper: Two-layer approximate boundary conditions for large-eddy simulations
doi: 10.2514/3.13200
As you can see from the title, the flow in the square duct is not the main subject!
Mostafa Mahmoudi
Mostafa
@ Filippo Maria Denaro:

thanks for the comment.
Yes, I did it before and I validated the whole code including turbulence modeling, also. but for my
own geometry I cannot reach a reasonable solution, in fact, all the flow patterns are reasonable
but the magnitude of my secondary flow is the problem!
3/5
8/17/2014
@ Alexandre Silva Lopes:
thanks, I'll download it.
another interesting point is that I recently tried to solve this geometry using Fluent and I got the
same results I'd got from the code.
I'm so confused!!!
Filippo
Maria
Hello.
My question was: have you checked the laminar developed solution (without SGS model) at Re=1
by comparing it to the analytical solution of the problem DivGrad w = dp/dz w=0 on boundaries?
If the solution is correct, then first try the LES no-model, that is run your LES code without any
SGS model at your Re number and a quite resolved grid. Then run on the same grid by adding the
SGS model.
See what the SGS model actually does...
Yoshiyuki Sakai
PhD student at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Yoshiyuki
Gavrilakis (DNS, JFM 1992) discusses the origin of the mean streamwise vorticity in a straight
duct with a square cross-section. He concluded that most of the vorticity production comes from
the spetial gradients of the Reynolds stress "anisotropy"; while your selection of models
(according to my poor understanding in turbulence modelling) assumes an "isotropy" of the
stresses. This kind of argument is pretty much common among the people who are working on
duct DNS (like myself).
My suggestion is, If you could afford, why don't you try a bit more expensive model, such as a
variant of RSTM?
Cheers!
Yoshi
Mark Kelly
Senior Research Scientist at DTU (Denmark)
Mark
You could also run a very highly-resolved case, and check the degree of anisotropy (e.g. Lumley
triangle) of higher-wavenumber fluctuations, to see if the subgrid model is indeed a problem.
Mostafa Mahmoudi
Mostafa
Finally I solved it. I used the dynamic Smagorinsky model with anisotropic filter model for my
case. I let the code solve my case using a very small time step for 20 nondimensional time, and
then I increased the time step and let it run until 1000 nondimensional time. I got the correct
solution and Also I validated it with Elias Balaras paper.
Also, I'd been using Smagorinskiy constant C_s=0.18. according to Balaras paper I used
C_s=0.1.
Thank you all for sharing your ideas with me and I approximately checked all of them and they
gave me a better view of how compile and validate a code.
Best Regards,
Mostafa
Like (1) Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 1 day ago
Filippo Maria Denaro likes this

Filippo
Maria
good... I strongly suggest to run the no-model simulation on the same grid to check for the effect
of the model. I also am quite sure that a mixed model would work better if you want to use the
static Smagorinsky model
Like (1) Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 1 day ago
4/5
8/17/2014
Mostafa Mahmoudi
Mostafa
Dear Filippo,
I tried a mixed Smagorinsky model but it gave me wrong results. Perhaps I made some mistakes
in implementation of it, I'm not sure the way it was written is 100% correct, but it gave me totally
wrong results. The model was a linear combination of Smagorinsky eddy viscosity model with a
scale similarity model.
I ran a no-model case for Re=1 and it gave me the correct answer, but I didn't run it for my
Reynolds number to see what is the effect of SGS model on the flow, but I'm very interested in
doing that.
Like Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 1 day ago
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8/17/2014

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and High

simulation of fully-developed turbulent flow in a square channel

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Like Comment (20) Follow Reply Privately 12 days ago

Like Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 11 days ago

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Mostafa Mahmoudi commented on a

thanks for your perusing the problem.

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Like Reply privately Flag as inappropriate 11 days ago

Alexandre Silva Lopes

@ Filippo Maria Denaro:

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