In our everyday life, turbulence is an omnipresent phenomenon and yet remains poorly understood. Its random and chaotic nature makes it a subject almost impossible to treat from the mathematical point of view and, at present, there<p>is no real prospect of a simple analytic theory. Scientists have therefore regarded the numerical simulation as an alternative to compute the relevant properties of turbulent flows. In this context, our thesis aims at developing and using accurate computational methods, namely pseudo-spectral methods, for studying hydrodynamic (1st part) and magnetohydrodynamic (2nd part) turbulence.<p><p>In the hydrodynamic part, Chapter I introduces the governing equations of fluid mechanics as well as the main issues related to the numerical study of turbulent flows. In particular, the Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of turbulence, in which accurate numerical solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations are obtained, are shown to be limited to moderately turbulent flows.<p>Chapter II introduces the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) technique which aims at simulating highly turbulent flows and which is based on a separation of scales.<p>In practice, it consists of simulating the large - resolved - scales of the flow explicitly while modelling the small - unresolved - scales. Two different approaches for modelling the kinetic energy of the unresolved scales are proposed and their respective advantages and drawbacks are discussed.<p>Chapter III is devoted the study of the mixing-layer using both DNS and LES. It consists of an inhomogeneous turbulent flow which has been studied experimentally and for which well-documented measurements are available. A highly accurate DNS mimicking the same experiment has been produced. It allows to study the inhomogeneity and anisotropy properties of this flow. Also, LES of the same flow, using different models, have been evaluated. In Chapter IV, we explore a pseudo-spectral method to investigate turbulence in a pipe. In this case, the method has to take into account two additional difficulties: i) the presence of the boundary and ii) the axis singularity. We detail how to circumvent these issues.<p><p>The second part of the thesis is devoted to magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. It concerns phenomena where electrically conducting flows interact with electromagnetism and for which governing equations are derived in Chapter V. In Chapter VI, a detailed analysis of the energy transfers between the magnetic and velocity fields is performed thanks to a high resolution database of homogeneous MHD turbulence. It provides some insights to understand the physics of the nonlinear interactions and is also a valuable diagnostic in the framework of LES modelling. Finally, the inhomogeneous configuration studied in Chapter III has been extended to MHD. Several statistics related to the kinetic and magnetic energies are measured and LES of this flow are performed and presented in Chapter VII. / Doctorat en sciences, Spécialisation physique / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Large-scale testing of low-rise buildings or components of tall buildings is essential as it provides more representative information about the realistic wind effects than the typical small scale studies, but as the model size increases, relatively less large-scale turbulence in the upcoming flow can be generated. This results in a turbulence power spectrum lacking low-frequency turbulence content. This deficiency is known to have significant effects on the estimated peak wind loads. To overcome these limitations, the method of Partial Turbulence Simulation (PTS) has been developed recently in the FIU Wall of Wind lab to analytically compensate for the effects of the missing low-frequency content of the spectrum. This method requires post-test analysis procedures and is based on the quasi-steady assumptions. The current study was an effort to enhance that technique by investigating the effect of scaling and the range of applicability of the method by considering the limitations risen from the underlying theory, and to simplify the 2DPTS (includes both in-plane components of the turbulence) by proposing a weighted average method. Investigating the effect of Reynolds number on peak aerodynamic pressures was another objective of the study. The results from five tested building models show as the model size was increased, PTS results showed a better agreement with the available field data from TTU building. Although for the smaller models (i.e., 1:100,1:50) almost a full range of turbulence spectrum was present, the highest peaks observed at full-scale were not reproduced, which apparently was because of the Reynolds number effect. The most accurate results were obtained when the PTS was used in the case with highest Reynolds number, which was the1:6 scale model with a less than 5% blockage and a xLum/bm ratio of 0.78. Besides that, the results showed that the weighted average PTS method can be used in lieu of the 2DPTS approach. So to achieve the most accurate results, a large-scale test followed by a PTS peak estimation method deemed to be the desirable approach which also allows the xLum/bm values much smaller than the ASCE recommended numbers.

Le couplage important entre les différentes échelles d’un écoulement est une des caractéristiques prin-cipales des turbulences. Cela est exprimé mathématiquement par les termes non linéaires présents dans les équations d’équilibre de l’écoulement, dominants en dynamique turbulente. En magnétohy-drodynamique (MHD), la force de Lorentz influe sur l’équation de conservation de l’impulsion et le nombre de termes non linéaires passe à quatre au lieu d’un seul pour un fluide non conducteur.<p>L’objectif principal de cette thèse est d’analyser le transport d’énergie inter-échelles en utilisant une simulation numérique directe d’un écoulement turbulent MHD. Les propriétés de localité du transport de l’énergie entre les échelles pour un écoulement anisotropique ou isotropique, généré par la présence d’un champ magnétique constant, sont renforcées. Un objectif secondaire est d’établir un cadre de travail pour l’étude du transport de particules test chargées dans un champ électromagnétique turbu-lent, i.e. généré par le mouvement d’un fluide conducteur, qui possède des structures à plusieurs ordres de grandeur. La structure de la thèse est présentée ci-dessous.<p>Dans la première partie, composée des deux premiers chapitres, l’auteur présente les notions de turbu-lences, aussi bien hydrodynamiques que MHD. Ces deux chapitres sont des synthèses.<p>La deuxième partie est la principale source de nouveaux résultats. Le chapitre 3 présente les méthodes numériques pour la résolution des équations, les méthodes pseudo-spectrales. Un nouveau type de force est introduit, imposant un niveau de dissipation pour tous les invariants. Dans le chapitre 4, il est effectué une analyse du transfert d'énergie entre ordres de grandeur pour les turbulences MHD. Pour explorer ces transferts d'énergie, le domaine spectral est décomposé en une série de coques de même nombre d'onde. Le transfert moyen d'énergie entre ces coques est analysé. Les transferts d'énergie s'avèrent être surtout locaux en ordre de grandeur, alors qu'une contribution non locale existe due à la force. En présence d'un champ magnétique, l'écoulement développe une direction préférentielle, une anisotropie, où une idée nouvelle de décomposition de l'espace spectral en structures annulaires est présentée. Utilisant cette décomposition annulaire on trouve que le transfert entre anneaux est local, surtout dans les anneaux de direction perpendiculaire au champ magnétique. Pour les turbulences isotropiques, dans le chapitre 5, la localité des flux d'énergie est explorée par le biais de fonctions de localité. Dans le cas de la turbulence MHD, nous avons un comportement non local plus prononcé.<p>La dernière partie, les chapitres 6 et 7, présente le formalisme de suivi des trajectoires de particules chargées évoluant dans un champ électromagnétique turbulent. L'influence de la méthode d'interpola-tion du solveur de particules est étudiée avant la présentation des concepts liés au transport de particu-les et aux régimes de diffusion. L'adiabatisme du mouvement des particules chargées est discuté et le transport de particules chargées dans un champ magnétique turbulent est montré en exemple.<p> / Doctorat en sciences, Spécialisation physique / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The performance of building envelopes and roofing systems significantly depends on accurate knowledge of wind loads and the response of envelope components under realistic wind conditions. Wind tunnel testing is a well-established practice to determine wind loads on structures. For small structures much larger model scales are needed than for large structures, to maintain modeling accuracy and minimize Reynolds number effects. In these circumstances the ability to obtain a large enough turbulence integral scale is usually compromised by the limited dimensions of the wind tunnel meaning that it is not possible to simulate the low frequency end of the turbulence spectrum. Such flows are called flows with Partial Turbulence Simulation. In this dissertation, the test procedure and scaling requirements for tests in partial turbulence simulation are discussed. A theoretical method is proposed for including the effects of low-frequency turbulences in the post-test analysis. In this theory the turbulence spectrum is divided into two distinct statistical processes, one at high frequencies which can be simulated in the wind tunnel, and one at low frequencies which can be treated in a quasi-steady manner. The joint probability of load resulting from the two processes is derived from which full-scale equivalent peak pressure coefficients can be obtained. The efficacy of the method is proved by comparing predicted data derived from tests on large-scale models of the Silsoe Cube and Texas-Tech University buildings in Wall of Wind facility at Florida International University with the available full-scale data. For multi-layer building envelopes such as rain-screen walls, roof pavers, and vented energy efficient walls not only peak wind loads but also their spatial gradients are important. Wind permeable roof claddings like roof pavers are not well dealt with in many existing building codes and standards. Large-scale experiments were carried out to investigate the wind loading on concrete pavers including wind blow-off tests and pressure measurements. Simplified guidelines were developed for design of loose-laid roof pavers against wind uplift. The guidelines are formatted so that use can be made of the existing information in codes and standards such as ASCE 7-10 on pressure coefficients on components and cladding.

The context of this thesis is the numerical simulation of turbulent flows at moderate Reynolds numbers and the improvement of the capabilities of an in-house 3D unsteady and incompressible flow solver called SFELES to simulate such flows.<p>In addition to this abstract, this thesis includes five other chapters.<p><p>The second chapter of this thesis presents the numerical methods implemented in the two CFD solvers used as part of this work, namely SFELES and PHASTA.<p><p>The third chapter concentrates on the implementation of a new library called FlexMG. This library allows the use of various types of iterative solvers preconditioned by algebraic multigrid methods, which require much less memory to solve linear systems than a direct sparse LU solver available in SFELES. Multigrid is an iterative procedure that relies on a series of increasingly coarser approximations of the original 'fine' problem. The underlying concept is the following: low wavenumber errors on fine grids become high wavenumber errors on coarser levels, which can be effectively removed by applying fixed-point methods on coarser levels.<p>Two families of algebraic multigrid preconditioners have been implemented in FlexMG, namely smooth aggregation-type and non-nested finite element-type. Unlike pure gridless multigrid, both of these families use the information contained in the initial fine mesh. A hierarchy of coarse meshes is also needed for the non-nested finite element-type multigrid so that our approaches can be considered as hybrid. Our aggregation-type multigrid is smoothed with either a constant or a linear least square fitting function, whereas the non-nested finite element-type multigrid is already smooth by construction. All these multigrid preconditioners are tested as stand-alone solvers or coupled with a GMRES (Generalized Minimal RESidual) method. After analyzing the accuracy of the solutions obtained with our solvers on a typical test case in fluid mechanics (unsteady flow past a circular cylinder at low Reynolds number), their performance in terms of convergence rate, computational speed and memory consumption is compared with the performance of a direct sparse LU solver as a reference. Finally, the importance of using smooth interpolation operators is also underlined in this work.<p><p>The fourth chapter is devoted to the study of subgrid scale models for the large eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flows.<p>It is well known that turbulence features a cascade process by which kinetic energy is transferred from the large turbulent scales to the smaller ones. Below a certain size, the smallest structures are dissipated into heat because of the effect of the viscous term in the Navier-Stokes equations.<p>In the classical formulation of LES models, all the resolved scales are used to model the contribution of the unresolved scales. However, most of the energy exchanges between scales are local, which means that the energy of the unresolved scales derives mainly from the energy of the small resolved scales.<p>In this fourth chapter, constant-coefficient-based Smagorinsky and WALE models are considered under different formulations. This includes a classical version of both the Smagorinsky and WALE models and several scale-separation formulations, where the resolved velocity field is filtered in order to separate the small turbulent scales from the large ones. From this separation of turbulent scales, the strain rate tensor and/or the eddy viscosity of the subgrid scale model is computed from the small resolved scales only. One important advantage of these scale-separation models is that the dissipation they introduce through their subgrid scale stress tensor is better controlled compared to their classical version, where all the scales are taken into account without any filtering. More precisely, the filtering operator (based on a top hat filter in this work) allows the decomposition u' = u - ubar, where u is the resolved velocity field (large and small resolved scales), ubar is the filtered velocity field (large resolved scales) and u' is the small resolved scales field. <p>At last, two variational multiscale (VMS) methods are also considered.<p>The philosophy of the variational multiscale methods differs significantly from the philosophy of the scale-separation models. Concretely, the discrete Navier-Stokes equations have to be projected into two disjoint spaces so that a set of equations characterizes the evolution of the large resolved scales of the flow, whereas another set governs the small resolved scales. <p>Once the Navier-Stokes equations have been projected into these two spaces associated with the large and small scales respectively, the variational multiscale method consists in adding an eddy viscosity model to the small scales equations only, leaving the large scales equations unchanged. This projection is obvious in the case of a full spectral discretization of the Navier-Stokes equations, where the evolution of the large and small scales is governed by the equations associated with the low and high wavenumber modes respectively. This projection is more complex to achieve in the context of a finite element discretization. <p>For that purpose, two variational multiscale concepts are examined in this work.<p>The first projector is based on the construction of aggregates, whereas the second projector relies on the implementation of hierarchical linear basis functions.<p>In order to gain some experience in the field of LES modeling, some of the above-mentioned models were implemented first in another code called PHASTA and presented along with SFELES in the second chapter.<p>Finally, the relevance of our models is assessed with the large eddy simulation of a fully developed turbulent channel flow at a low Reynolds number under statistical equilibrium. In addition to the analysis of the mean eddy viscosity computed for all our LES models, comparisons in terms of shear stress, root mean square velocity fluctuation and mean velocity are performed with a fully resolved direct numerical simulation as a reference.<p><p>The fifth chapter of the thesis focuses on the numerical simulation of the 3D turbulent flow over a re-entry Apollo-type capsule at low speed with SFELES. The Reynolds number based on the heat shield is set to Re=10^4 and the angle of attack is set to 180º, that is the heat shield facing the free stream. Only the final stage of the flight is considered in this work, before the splashdown or the landing, so that the incompressibility hypothesis in SFELES is still valid.<p>Two LES models are considered in this chapter, namely a classical and a scale-separation version of the WALE model. Although the capsule geometry is axisymmetric, the flow field in its wake is not and induces unsteady forces and moments acting on the capsule. The characterization of the phenomena occurring in the wake of the capsule and the determination of their main frequencies are essential to ensure the static and dynamic stability during the final stage of the flight. <p>Visualizations by means of 3D isosurfaces and 2D slices of the Q-criterion and the vorticity field confirm the presence of a large meandering recirculation zone characterized by a low Strouhal number, that is St≈0.15.<p>Due to the detachment of the flow at the shoulder of the capsule, a resulting annular shear layer appears. This shear layer is then affected by some Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities and ends up rolling up, leading to the formation of vortex rings characterized by a high frequency. This vortex shedding depends on the Reynolds number so that a Strouhal number St≈3 is detected at Re=10^4.<p>Finally, the analysis of the force and moment coefficients reveals the existence of a lateral force perpendicular to the streamwise direction in the case of the scale-separation WALE model, which suggests that the wake of the capsule may have some <p>preferential orientations during the vortex shedding. In the case of the classical version of the WALE model, no lateral force has been observed so far so that the mean flow is thought to be still axisymmetric after 100 units of non-dimensional physical time.<p><p>Finally, the last chapter of this work recalls the main conclusions drawn from the previous chapters. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished