he primary objective of this study is to validate and/or identify issues for available numerical methods and turbulence models in OpenFOAM 2.0.0. Such a study will provide a guideline for users, will aid acceptance of OpenFOAM as one of the research solvers at institutions and also guide future multidisciplinary research using OpenFOAM. In addition, a problem of aerospace interest such as the flow features and vortex breakdown around a VFE-II model is obtained for SA, SST RANS and SA-DDES models and compared with DLR experiment. The available numerical methods such as time schemes, convection schemes, P-V couplings and turbulence models are tested as available for a fundamental case of a backward facing step for RANS and Hybrid RANSLES prediction of fully turbulent flow at a Reynolds number of 32000 and the OpenFOAM predictions are validated against experimental data by Driver et.al and compared with Fluent predictions.

In hybrid RANS/LES, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations method is used to treat the near-wall region and large-eddy simulation (LES) is applied to the core turbulent region. Owing to the incompatibility of these two numerical modelling approaches, an artificial (i.e., non-physical) buffer layer forms along the interface where the model switches from RANS to LES. In this thesis, a novel dynamic forcing scheme incorporating backscatter is proposed in order to remove the artificial buffer layer. In contrast to previous forcing techniques, the proposed forcing is determined dynamically from the flow field itself, and does not require any extraction of turbulent fields from reference direct numerical simulation (DNS) or high-resolution LES databases. The proposed forcing model has been tested on three types of wall-bounded turbulent flows, namely, turbulent flow in a plane channel; turbulent flow in a spanwise rotating channel; and turbulent flow in a spanwise rotating rib-roughened channel. In order to validate the present hybrid approach, turbulence statistics obtained from hybrid RANS/LES simulations are thoroughly compared with the available DNS results and laboratory measurement data. Based on the study of a plane channel flow, transport equations for the resolved turbulent stresses and kinetic energy are introduced to investigate the effects of dynamic forcing on reduction of the thickness and impact of the artificial buffer layer. As long as the dynamic forcing is in use, the artificial buffer layer have been successfully removed, indicating that the proposed hybrid approach is insensitive to the choices of the forcing region or interface location. The predictive performance of the dynamic forcing scheme has been further evaluated by considering turbulent flows subjected to a special type of body force, i.e., the non-inertial and non-conservative Coriolis force. Due to the effects of system rotation, turbulence level is enhanced on the pressure side and suppressed on the suction side of the rotating channel. Furthermore, it is reported in this thesis that the classification of the roughness type now relies not only on the pitch ratio, but also on the rotation number in the context of rotating rib-roughened flows. / February 2016

In order to increase results accuracy and to provide some time-dependency to CFD results, embedded RANS/LES simulations are getting more and more interesting. In order to run these simulations accurate LES boundary conditions are required, not to affect the downstream results with a poor quality synthetic turbulence generation. Considering the currently developped methodologies, it is not possible to generate a divergence free turbulent flow which satisfy a non isotropic state of turbulence. The author started from the Synthetic Eddy Method (SEM) defined by Jarrin (2009), and defined a new shape function with the ability to satisfy continuity. The new methodology, named Divergence Free SEM (DFSEM), is able to reproduce almost any kind of turbulence anisotropy by using a special shape function and adapting the eddies intensities in order to match the Reynolds stress tensor rather than using the Lund coefficients, as most of the precursor methodologies did. Results comparisons against SEM and some other very popular synthetic turbulence models in some academic cases, proved that a reduce influence on the downstream flow was achieved. In most of the cases the friction coefficient Cf , used as a performance parameter, benefit by reducing the downstream developping zone by almost 50% in most cases, when compared against SEM. Another issue that has been tackled regards the unphysical pressure fluctuations present because of the synthetic turbulence, due to non perfectly constant mass-flow rate imposed in stochastic methodologies. The new methodology also showed an increased flexibility as it has been tested in embedded DDES simulation, by using the blending function to activate/deactivate it, and again it showed improved performances when compared against standard SEM.

Computational investigations were carried out to evaluate the effectiveness and usability of hybrid RANS/LES techniques for predicting the unsteady separated flow over wings with ice accretion. RANS and hybrid RANS/LES computations were performed using the viscous flow solver CHEM with the SST turbulence model. Two configurations were considered during the study: an extruded wing with a glaze-ice shape and a swept wing with a simulated glaze-ice accretion. Hybrid RANS/LES results, in general, predict a less active shear layer ``roll up' than seen in the experimental data. Qualitative improvements are seen in the hybrid RANS/LES results over corresponding RANS results. The extruded wing results show that the CHEM hybrid RANS/LES results are similar to the AVUS DES results. The use of preconditioning and a different turbulent model in CHEM showed a slight improvement in results.

No description available.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been widely applied to simulate turbulent flows in an urban environment. The two basic methodologies in CFD that have been applied here are a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) modeling and a large-eddy simulation (LES). The nature of the flow in a built-up urban area consisting of an arbitrary aggregation of buildings is dominated by unsteady large-scale turbulent structures. Recognizing that RANS is unable to correctly capture these turbulent structures while LES is associated with high computational costs, a hybrid RANS/LES methodology that combines the computational efficiency of RANS with the predictive accuracy of LES can be a promising simulation approach for the application to urban flows. In the non-zonal approach of hybrid RANS/LES methodology, a single generalized turbulence model is used in the entire computational domain. This model can function as a RANS turbulence closure model or as a LES subgrid scale model, depending on the local grid resolution or flow properties. A variant of non-zonal approaches, referred as partially resolved numerical simulation (PRNS) in this study, obtains the generalized turbulence model from the rescaling of a conventional RANS model through the incorporation of a resolution control function (F_R). The resolution control function F_R is used to characterize the degree of modeling required to represent the unresolved scales of motion. A new generalized functional form for F_R in PRNS is proposed in this thesis. The predictive performance of PRNS is compared with unsteady RANS (URANS) and LES computations, for a plane channel flow, and for fully-developed and developing flows over a matrix of cubes resembling a group of buildings. It is demonstrated that PRNS behaves similarly to LES, in terms of the predictions of the mean flow and turbulence, but outperforms URANS in general. This indicates PRNS is a promising approach for the simulation of complex turbulent flows in an urban environment.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been widely applied to simulate turbulent flows in an urban environment. The two basic methodologies in CFD that have been applied here are a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) modeling and a large-eddy simulation (LES). The nature of the flow in a built-up urban area consisting of an arbitrary aggregation of buildings is dominated by unsteady large-scale turbulent structures. Recognizing that RANS is unable to correctly capture these turbulent structures while LES is associated with high computational costs, a hybrid RANS/LES methodology that combines the computational efficiency of RANS with the predictive accuracy of LES can be a promising simulation approach for the application to urban flows. In the non-zonal approach of hybrid RANS/LES methodology, a single generalized turbulence model is used in the entire computational domain. This model can function as a RANS turbulence closure model or as a LES subgrid scale model, depending on the local grid resolution or flow properties. A variant of non-zonal approaches, referred as partially resolved numerical simulation (PRNS) in this study, obtains the generalized turbulence model from the rescaling of a conventional RANS model through the incorporation of a resolution control function (F_R). The resolution control function F_R is used to characterize the degree of modeling required to represent the unresolved scales of motion. A new generalized functional form for F_R in PRNS is proposed in this thesis. The predictive performance of PRNS is compared with unsteady RANS (URANS) and LES computations, for a plane channel flow, and for fully-developed and developing flows over a matrix of cubes resembling a group of buildings. It is demonstrated that PRNS behaves similarly to LES, in terms of the predictions of the mean flow and turbulence, but outperforms URANS in general. This indicates PRNS is a promising approach for the simulation of complex turbulent flows in an urban environment.

The work presented in this dissertation concerns continued development, validation and verification of the partially averaged Navier-Stokes (PANS) method - a variable resolution closure model for turbulence. Linear eddy viscosity models (LEVM), which are popular because of their simplicity and affordability in terms of computational cost have fundamental deficiencies and cannot be trusted to accurately represent turbulence in realistic complex flows. The more high fidelity approaches such as large eddy simulations (LES) and direct numerical simulations (DNS) are out of realm of engineering applicability because of their high requirements in computing power. PANS, a variable resolution approach considered in this study, lies between LEVM and LES in terms of computational cost and is designed to prudently utilize the available computing power to improve accuracy. This dissertation presents the various studies performed to characterize the PANS fluctuations and extend the model for use in various wall bounded flows. The road map towards our goal includes: (i) Comparing a-priori and a-posteriori eddy viscosity values to establish whether PANS is capable of producing the pre-specified level of reduction. (ii) Investigating the scaling of PANS fluctuations for different levels of prescribed resolution and establishing if the fluctuations abide by known turbulence scaling laws. (iii) Extending PANS to k-w formulation which is better suited for wall-bounded shear flows, and (iv) Modifying the present LEVM to yield reasonable behavior in the rapid distortion limit where the turbulence is elastic in nature which ultimately affects PANS performance. Results reported in this dissertation illustrate that the PANS closure yields reliable and predictable reduction in the modeled viscosity. The accuracy of the simulations improve as the effective damping is reduced by lowering the specified viscosity providing credibility to the PANS method as a bridging model that performs as intended.

Rod bundle is a typical constitutive element of a very wide range of nuclear reactor designs. This thesis describes the investigation of such geometry with wall-resolved Large Eddy Simulation (LES). In order to alleviate the mesh constraint, imposed by the near wall resolution, the usage of embedded refinements and polyhedral meshes is analysed firstly with a inviscid laminar case (Taylor Green vortices) and secondly with a fully turbulent case (channel flow only with embedded refinement). The inviscid test case shows that the addition of embedded refinements decreases the conservation properties of the code. Indeed the accuracy decreases from second order in a structured conformal mesh, to something in between first and second order depending on the quality of the unstructured mesh. Better results are obtained when the interface between refined and coarse areas presents a more regular and structured pattern, reducing the generation of skewed and stretched cells. The channel flow simulation shows that the Reynolds stresses, of some embedded refined meshes, are affected by spurious oscillations. Surprisingly this effect is present in the unstructured meshes with the best orthogonal properties. Indeed analysis of Reynolds stress budgets shows that terms, where the gradient in the wall normal direction is dominant, have a largely oscillatory behaviour. The cause of the problem is attributed to the convective term and in particular in the method used for the gradient reconstruction. As a consequence of these contradictory signs between the inviscid and the fully turbulent cases, the rod bundle test case is analysed using a conventional body fitted multiblock mesh. Two different Reynolds numbers are investigated reporting Reynolds stresses and budgets. The flow is characterised by an energetic and almost periodic azimuthal flow pulsation in the gap region between adjacent sub-channels, which makes turbulent quantities largely different from those in plane channel and pipes and enhances mixing. Experiments found that a constant Strouhal number, with the variation of the Reynolds number, characterises the phenomenon. The frequency analysis finds that present simulations are distinguished by three dominant frequencies, the first in agreement with the experimental value and two higher ones, which might be due to the correlation of the azimuthal velocity in the streamwise direction. Several passive temperature fields are added at the simulations in order to study the effects of the variation of the Prandtl number and the change in boundary conditions (Neumann and Dirichlet). A simplified case where an imbalance of the scalar between adjacent sub-channels is also investigated in order to evaluate the variation of the heat fluxes with respect to the homogeneous case. An alternative solution, to reduce the mesh constraint imposed by the wall, is to hybridize LES with RANS. The main achievement of this work is to integrate the heat transfer modelling to the already existing model for the dynamic part. Further investigations of the blending function, used to merge the two velocity fields, are carried out in conjunction with a study of the model dependency on the mesh resolution. The validation is performed on a fully developed channel flow at different Reynolds numbers and with constant wall heat flux. On coarse meshes the model shows an improvement of the results for both thermal and hydraulic parts with respect to a standard LES. On refined meshes, suitable for wall-resolved LES, the model suffers from a problem of double counting of modelled Reynolds stresses and heat fluxes because the RANS contribution does not naturally disappear as the mesh resolution increases.

An aircraft may experience inlight ice accretion and corresponding reductions in performance and control when the vehicle encounters clouds of super-cooled water droplets. In order to study anti-icing coatings, the EADS-IW Surface Engineering Group is building a refrigerated wind tunnel. Several variations of droplet delivery systems were explored to determine the most effective way to introduce mono-dispersed droplets into the wind tunnel. To investigate this flow, timeurate, unsteady viscous flow simulations were performed using the Loci/CHEM flow solver with a multi-scale hybrid RANS/LES turbulence model. A Lagrangian droplet model was employed to simulate the movement of water droplets in the wind tunnel. It was determined that the droplet delivery system required pressure relief to properly orient the flow inside the droplet delivery tube. Additionally, a streamlined drop tube cross-section was demonstrated to reduce turbulence in the wake and decrease the variability in droplet trajectories in the test section.