9th Osborne Reynolds Recent Postgraduate & Research Student Award Imperial College London, Department of Aerodynamics, 16th

June 2011

Development of a near-wall turbulence model and applications

Flavien Billard School of MACE, The University of Manchester PO Box 88, Manchester, M60 1QD, UK email: avien.billard@manchester.ac.uk
The present work introduces a new near-wall eddy viscosity (EVM) Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) model based on the elliptic blending method. It is intended to be used in an industrial solver, so that all the steps of the present developments, aiming at improving the accuracy, favors simplicity and robustness. Some applications on separating ows, heat transfer and external aerodynamics cases are presented.

Derivation of the model

The v 2 f model introduced in Durbin (1991) stems from the standard k system and a third equation is solved for a scalar v 2 , which can be assimilated near solid walls to the wall-normal turbulent uctuations. In the v 2 equation the unclosed source term S is modelled using an elliptic equation to represent non-local wall eects (L representing the turbulent lengthscale and Sh is the value S should recover in the core of the ow): S = kf with f L2 f = Sh /k. Despite the good performances reported for this model, its use in segregated solvers (i.e. the ones which solve one variable at a time) yields numerical instabilities as a consequence of the wall boundary condition which has to be given to f to ensure the correct near-wall turbulence representation. Yet the v 2 f model was the object of several subsequent alterations to escape this discrepancy (e.g. the modied version of Lien & Kalitzin (2001) is implemented in most commercial CFD codes) these numerical corrections were often detrimental to the predictive capabilities of the original instance. The present work introduces the developments of a numerically stable low Reynolds number EVM which incorporates the principles of the v 2 f approach and additional improvements, mainly located into the equation, aiming at bringing a gain in accuracy. The new proposed blended k v 2 /k model (Billard & Laurence, 2011) will be denoted as BLv 2 /k from this point on. It applies in an EVM framework the elliptic blending (EB) method proposed in Manceau & Hanjali (2002) in their Reynolds stress model and which consists in solving an elliptic equation for a non dimensional parameter instead of f , which switches from 0 at walls to 1 in the core of the ow and is used as a blending parameter to represent the unclosed source term S = (1 3 )Sw + 3 Sh (Sw is the near-wall model for S). Because = 0 at walls, the numerical instabilities mentioned above are totally alleviated. Noteworthily the asymptotic wall behaviour of v 2 is O(y 4 ) (y being the wall distance) which may be dicult to reproduce by coarse meshes near walls. To remedy this possible source of inaccuracy, the BL-v 2 /k resolves v 2 /k instead, whose quadratic behaviour, similar to that of k, is easier to capture, following the recommandation of Laurence et al. (2004). A priori evaluation of is shown on Figure 1, using DNS data: is an independent function of the friction velocity based Reynolds number Re which scales very well with the non-dimensionnal wall distance y + (DNS data are represented by symbols). Therefore its use as a blending parameter resembles the widely adopted exponentially decaying damping functions of y + , but whose coecients are dynamically calculated instead of empirically prescribed. While the introduction of the two non-dimensionnal parameters and v 2 /k are answers to the stability issues linked to the original approach, we now focus on improvements performed on the k and equations. Figure 1 Improved equation for wall bounded ows The v 2 f model uses the standard k and equations and the latter adopts the source / sink / turbulent diusion empirical terms (Jones & Launder, 1972), with associated constants C1 , C2 and calibrated to reproduce the observed behaviour in simple shear layer, decaying isotropic turbulence and logarithmic layer. Improvements are proposed herein to be active in the buer layer and the wake region of a boundary layer. The near-wall behaviour of the dissipation rate is known to be unsatisfactorily represented by the standard equation. While Durbin (1993) and subsequent v 2 f modellers use a variable C1 factor, the present model relies on the so called E term, dened as E = 2t (kj Ui )(kj Ui ), rst introduced in Jones & Launder (1972).

Figure 2

The ad-hoc C1 function sometimes yields non-linearities (e.g. in Durbin (1995) it is made a function of the production to-dissipation ratio P/ yielding a quadratic dependance on P in the equation). More over the inuence of this C1

 function extents well beyond the near-wall region and in practice C1 never recovers the value C1 calibrated in simple shear-ows. Instead the present model uses an extra source term proportional to (1 3 ) E. Using the blending parameter to restrict its inuence in the near-wall region, this term helps considerably improve the velocity prediction + in the buer layer: Figure 2 shows the improved predictions of the variable y + dU+ by the model in a channel ow for dy

dierent Reynolds numbers, compared to the v 2 f version of Durbin and Laurence (1996). The second proposed improvement is based on the observation that the relation linking the turbulent variables to the modelled shear stress, known as the constitutive relation uv/ U = t = C v 2 k/ (Durbin, 1991), is inaccurate, y even in the near-wall region of an equilibrium boundary layer. Figure 3 shows a measure (t ) of the dependance on the Reynolds number Re (similar to that of Hoyas & Jimnez (2008)) for both the exact and the model term (a priori evaluated from the DNS data). This suggests that the model for t is more Re dependent than the exact term. Therefore, the predictions of the v 2 f model for the individual turbulent variables constituting t need to be purposely altered to cope with the shortcomings of the constitutive relation. The present model recommends a change of variable which is equivalent to move the E term from the to the k equation. As seen on Figure 4 the predicted peak of k, known to be strongly Re dependant, is diminished. The predicted variables k and are much less Reynolds dependant than the DNS values, and in the BLv 2 /k model, their use in the t denition helps bring (t ) closer to that of the exact term, as shown on Figure 3. This helps improve predictions for both low and high Reynolds number ows.

Figure 3

Figure 4

The last modication is active at the edge of a boundary layer, corresponding to the defect layer of a channel ow. Parneix et al. (1996) have shown that in this region the sink term C2 /k 2 yields an over-predicted representation of 4 the term it is supposed to model in the exact equation (Mansour & Rodi, 1993), namely the slow term P Y (following 2 /k model, the following functional C coecient is the terminology and the notation of the same authors). In the BL-v 2 t t adopted: C2 = C2 + 3 (C4 C2 ) tanh (Dk /), where Dk represents the turbulent transport of k. This modication enables the coecient C2 to take a smaller t value where the ratio Dk / is signicant, which is in the defect layer, while recovering the recommended C2 = 1.83 in any other situation (near wall region, log layer, decaying isotropic turbulence). Figure 5 shows the predictions of the turbulent viscosity t with the BL-v 2 /k model without and with the C2 modication. As seen in many RANS EVMs, without the modication the predicted t exhibits a constant growth in the defect layer, not shown in the DNS proles (and this holds also for the predicted turbulent time and length scale) which is linked to an under-prediction of in Figure 5 this region. With the proposed improvement, the present model recovers the behviour observed on the DNS data. The proposed modications are devised such that they improve the predictions in a given situation without altering the behaviour elsewhere. In a channel ow, the model is easily tuned for dierent Reynolds numbers. Figure 6 and 7 show the mean velocity and the skin friction coecient in a channel ow for dierent Reynolds numbers (Reb is the bulk velocity based Reynolds number). The present model is compared to the v 2 f of Lien & Kalitzin (2001) (LK-v 2 f ), the k of Launder & Sharma (1974) (LS-k ) Figure 6 Figure 7 and the k -SST model of Menter (1994).

Illustration of the model performances

The BL-v 2 /k model is implemented and validated in the industrial nite volume code Code_Saturne (Archambeau et al. , 2004). It was successfully run on many cases including separating ows and heat transfer applications. The use of the E term helps improve the prediction of by-pass transition (prediction of the skin friction coecient Cf on the T3A at plate case (Savill, 1993) shown on Figure 8) with a behaviour similar to that of the LS-k . Figure 9 presents Cf predictions on the asymmetric plane diuser (top) of Obi et al. (1993) and periodic hill (bottom) of Almeida et al. (1992). In these cases, the separation and reattachement locations are well predicted by the present model: the coecient C2 is naturally decreased at the edge of the recirculation to reproduce the correct mixing between the bulk and the recirculating ow. Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 and 11 present the predictions of the mean upward velocity and the turbulent shear stress in a case of upward ow in a dierentially heated channel (DNS of Kasagi and Nishimura, 1997), the buoyancy and the pressure gradient opposing (resp. aiding) each other near the cold (resp. hot) wall. On the aiding side, the turbulence impairment due to buoyancy is correctly captured by the present BL-v 2 /k model. Figure 10 Figure 11 Other heat transfer cases, including natural convection in a cavity (Betts and Bokhari, 2000), ow in a ribbed channel (Rau et al. 1998), jet impinging a at plate (Cooper et al. 1993) and vertical heated pipe (You et al., 2003), were successfully run with the present model (e.g. Billard (2011)). In such cases regions of very low turbulence are often encountered (e.g. corners of the Betts cavity), which can bring numerical instabilities. The present formulation addresses such issues.

Application to three dimensionnal ows

The present model was also successfully applied on external aerodynamics cases: the ow over a highly swept wing (Zhong & Turner, 2008) and around the Boeing Rudimentary Landing Gear (the Reynolds number based on the free stream velocity and the wing chord length (resp. the wheel diameter) is 2.1 105 (resp 106 )). The simulations were run on block structured meshes of (3.7106 and 5.4106 cells respectively) using HPC facilities. The swept wing ow was run in unsteady RANS mode.

Figure 12

Figure 13

Figure 12 and 13 show the isosurfaces of vorticity magnitude colored by the turbulent kinetic energy on the two geometries (for the swept wing, the instantaneous vorticity is shown). The presentation will include more detailed results on the 2D and 3D cases presented in this abstract.

References
Archambeau, F., Mechitoua, N., & Sakiz, M. 2004. International Journal on Finite Volumes, 1(1). Billard, F, & Laurence, D. 2011. Submitted to International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow. Billard, F. 2011. Ph.D. thesis, School of Mech. Aero. and Civil Eng. - The University of Manchester, to appear. Durbin, P.A. 1991. Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics, 3(1), 113. Hoyas, S., & Jimnez, J. 2008. Physics of Fluids, 20, 101511. Jones, WP, & Launder, BE. 1972. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 15(2), 301314. Laurence, D., Uribe, J.C., & Utyuzhnikov, S.V. 2004. Flow, Turbulence and Combustion, 73(1), 169185. Lien, F.S., & Kalitzin, G. 2001. International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow, 22(1), 5361. Parneix, S., Laurence, D., & Durbin, P. 1996. Pages 4766 of: Proceedings of the Summer Program, CTR.