<p dir="ltr">Grid convergence and scaling analyses have not been done rigorously for practical large-eddy simulations (LES). The challenge arises from the fact that there are two grid-related length scales: grid size and LES filter width. It causes the numerical and model errors in LES to be inherently coupled, making the convergence of either error difficult to analyze. This study works to overcome the challenge by developing scaling laws that can be used to guide the convergence analysis of errors in LES. Three different convergence cases are considered, and their respective scaling laws are developed by varying the ratio between grid size and filter width. A pool fire is adopted as a test case for the convergence analysis of LES. Qualitative and quantitative assessments of the LES results are made first to ensure reliable numerical solutions. In the subsequent scaling analysis, it is found that the results are consistent with their respective scaling laws. The results provide strong support to the developed scaling laws. The work is significant as it proposes a rigorous way to guide convergence analysis of LES errors. In a world where LES already has a wide range of applicability and is still becoming more prominent, it is imperative to have a thorough understanding of how it works including its convergence and scaling laws with respect to the change of grid size and filter width.</p>

<div>Studies of turbulent combustion in the past mainly focus on problems with single-regime combustion. In practical combustion systems, however, combustion rarely occurs in a single regime, and different regimes of combustion can be observed in the same system. This creates a significant gap between our existing knowledge of combustion in single regime and the practical need in multi-regime combustion. In this work, we aim to extend the traditional single-regime combustion models to problems involving different regimes of combustion. Among the existing modeling methods, Transported Probability Density Function (PDF) method is attractive for its intrinsic closure of treating detailed chemical kinetics and has been demonstrated to be promising in predicting low-probability but practically important combustion events like local extinction and re-ignition. In this work, we focus on the model assessment and advancement of the Large Eddy Simulation (LES)/ PDF method in predicting turbulent multi-regime combustion.</div><div><br></div><div><div>Two combustion benchmark problems are considered for the model assessment. One is a recently designed turbulent piloted jet flame that features statistically transient processes, the Sydney turbulent pulsed piloted jet flame. A direct comparison of the predicted and measured time series of the axial velocity demonstrates a satisfactory prediction of the flow and turbulence fields of the pulsed jet flame by the employed LES/PDF modeling method. A comparison of the PLIF-OH images and the predicted OH mass fraction contours at a few selected times shows that the method captures the different combustion stages including healthy burning, significant extinction, and the re-establishment of healthy burning, in the statistically transient process. The temporal history of the conditional PDF of OH mass fraction/temperature at around stoichiometric conditions at different axial locations suggests that the method predicts the extinction and re-establishment timings accurately at upstream locations but less accurately at downstream locations with a delay of burning reestablishment. The other test case is a unified series of existing turbulent piloted flames. To facilitate model assessment across different combustion regimes, we develop a model validation framework by unifying several existing pilot stabilized turbulent jet flames in different combustion regimes. The characteristic similarity and difference of the employed piloted flames are examined, including the Sydney piloted flames L, B, and M, the Sandia piloted flames D, E, and F, a series of piloted premixed Bunsen flames, and the Sydney/Sandia inhomogeneous inlet piloted jet flames. Proper parameterization and a regime diagram are introduced to characterize the pilot stabilized flames covering non-premixed, partially premixed, and premixed flames. A preliminary model assessment is carried out to examine the simultaneous model performance of the LES/PDF method for the piloted jet flames across different combustion regimes.</div><div><br></div><div>With the assessment work in the above two test cases, it is found that the LES/PDF method can predict the statistically transient combustion and multi-regime combustion reasonably well but some modeling limitations are also identified. Thus, further model advancement is needed for the LES/PDF method. In this work, we focus on two model advancement studies related to the molecular diffusion and sub-filter scale mixing processes in turbulent combustion. The first study is to deal with differential molecular diffusion (DMD) among different species. The importance of theDMD effects on combustion has been found in many applications. However, in most previous combustion models equal molecular diffusivity is assumed. To incorporate the DMD effects accurately, we develop a model called Variance Consistent Mean Shift (VCMS) model. The second model advancement focuses on the sub-filter scale mixing in high-Karlovitz (Ka) number turbulent combustion. We analyze the DNS data of a Sandia high-Ka premixed jet flame to gain insights into the modeling of sub-filter scale mixing. A sub-filter scale mixing time scale is analyzed with respect to the filter size to examine the validity of a power-law scaling model for the mixing time scale.</div></div>

La thèse a pour but de développer une méthodologie de calcul instationnaire permettant une étude qualitative et quantitative de l’aérodynamique externe d’une automobile. La première partie de l’étude est consacrée au développement de la méthodologie numérique sur les différents corps d’Ahmed à 25°, géométries simplifiées d’une automobile réelle, afin de valider les choix stratégiques de maillages et de méthodes numériques ainsi que s’assurer de la bonne résolution de l’écoulement. Les résultats numériques sont comparés aux données expérimentales obtenues au cours d’essais réalisés à la soufflerie La Ferté Vidame lors de travaux de thèse précédents. A l’issue de ce travail, la méthode hybride Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation Shear-Stress Transport (DDES SST) est sélectionnée pour la suite de l’étude au vu des meilleures performances obtenues (torseur aérodynamique, coefficient de pression, topologie d’écoulement) par rapport aux méthodes Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS), Scale Adaptive Simulation (SAS) et Stress-Blended Eddy Simulation (SBES). La seconde phase de l’étude consiste à adapter la méthodologie précédemment développée sur un véhicule réel, la Peugeot 308 SW. Au préalable, une base de données expérimentales conséquente a été réalisée au sein du Groupement d’Intérêt Economique Souffleries Aéroacoustiques Automobiles (GIE S2A) au cours de ces travaux. La géométrie est tout d’abord simplifiée afin de faciliter la mise en place de la méthodologie numérique : entrées d’air fermées, soubassement lissé, roues remplacées par des carénages. Les résultats obtenus sont encourageants et démontrent globalement la supériorité de la DDES par rapport aux méthodes RANS classiques. La topologie d’écoulement est mieux prédite (soubassement et sillage), même si la prédiction du coefficient de portance reste une difficulté majeure pour ce type de méthode hybride. / The main goal of this PhD is to develop an unsteady numerical method to study the external aerodynamic flow around real vehicles. The first part of the study focuses on the flow around simplified geometries, such as 25° Ahmed bodies (with sharp and rounded edges on the back of the body), in order to determine the optimal turbulence model, mesh setup and numerical parameters. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results are compared to experimental data reported in literature conducted in the La Ferté Vidame wind tunnel. Based on this study, Shear-Stress Transport Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (SST DDES) demonstrates superiority over Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS), Scale Adaptive Simulation (SAS) and Stress Blended Eddy Simulation (SBES) turbulence models, regarding both drag and lift coefficients predictions, and flow topology.Secondly, the numerical procedure is adapted for a real vehicle, the Peugeot 308 SW estate car. A substantial experimental campaign was carried out in the Groupement d’Intérêt Economique Souffleries Aéroacoustiques Automobiles (GIE S2A) wind tunnel to provide data against which the numerical results are compared. Given the geometric complexity of a real vehicle, the car is simplified for this study as follows: the front air inlets are closed, the underbody is smoothed with additional panels and the wheels are replaced by fairings. DDES computations show encouraging results. A significant improvement of the flow topology is obtained with DDES compared to RANS models. However, the prediction of the lift coefficient remains a major difficulty with these hybrid methods.

This thesis deals with the description and development of two classical turbulent shear flows, namely free jet and flat plate turbulent boundary layer flows. In both cases new experimental data has been obtained and in the latter case comparisons are also made with data obtained from data bases, both of experimental and numerical origin. The jet flow studies comprise three parts, made in three different experimental facilities, each dealing with a specific aspect of jet flows. The first part is devoted to the effect of swirl on the mixing characteristics of a passive scalar in the near-field region of a moderately swirling jet. Instantaneous streamwise and azimuthal velocity components as well as the temperature were simultaneously accessed by means of combined X-wire and cold-wire anemometry. The results indicate a modification of the turbulence structures to that effect that the swirling jet spreads, mixes and evolves faster compared to its non-swirling counterpart. The high correlation between streamwise velocity and temperature fluctuations as well as the streamwise passive scalar flux are even more enhanced due to the addition of swirl, which in turn shortens the distance and hence time needed to mix the jet with the ambient air. The second jet flow part was set out to test the hypothesis put forward by Talamelli &amp; Gavarini (Flow, Turbul. &amp; Combust. 76), who proposed that the wake behind a separation wall between two streams of a coaxial jet creates the condition for an absolute instability. The experiments confirm the hypothesis and show that the instability, by means of the induced vortex shedding, provides a continuous forcing mechanism for the control of the flow field. The potential of this passive mechanism as an easy, effective and practical way to control the near-field of interacting shear layers as well as its effect towards increased turbulence activity has been shown. The third part of the jet flow studies deals with the hypothesis that so called oblique transition may play a role in the breakdown to turbulence for an axisymmetric jet.For wall bounded flows oblique transition gives rise to steady streamwise streaks that break down to turbulence, as for instance documented by Elofsson &amp; Alfredsson (J. Fluid Mech. 358). The scenario of oblique transition has so far not been considered for jet flows and the aim was to study the effect of two oblique modes on the transition scenario as well as on the flow dynamics. For certain frequencies the turbulence intensity was surprisingly found to be reduced, however it was not possible to detect the presence of streamwise streaks. This aspect must be furher investigated in the future in order to understand the connection between the turbulence reduction and the azimuthal forcing. The boundary layer part of the thesis is also threefold, and uses both new data as well as data from various data bases to investigate the effect of certain limitations of hot-wire measurements near the wall on the mean velocity but also on the fluctuating streamwise velocity component. In the first part a new set of experimental data from a zero pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer, supplemented by direct and independent skin friction measurements, are presented. The Reynolds number range of the data is between 2300 and 18700 when based on the free stream velocity and the momentum loss thickness. Data both for the mean and fluctuating streamwise velocity component are presented. The data are validated against the composite profile by Chauhan et al. (Fluid Dyn. Res. 41) and are found to fulfil recently established equilibrium criteria. The problem of accurately locating the wall position of a hot-wire probe and the errors this can result in is thoroughly discussed in part 2 of the boundary layer study. It is shown that the expanded law of the wall to forth and fifth order with calibration constants determined from recent high Reynolds number DNS can be used to fix the wall position to an accuracy of 0.1 and 0.25 l_ * (l_* is the viscous length scale) when accurately determined measurements reaching y+=5 and 10, respectively, are available. In the absence of data below the above given limits, commonly employed analytical functions and their log law constants, have been found to affect the the determination of wall position to a high degree. It has been shown, that near-wall measurements below y+=10 or preferable 5 are essential in order to ensure a correctly measured or deduced absolute wall position. A  number of peculiarities in concurrent wall-bounded turbulent flow studies, was found to be associated with a erroneously deduced wall position. The effect of poor spatial resolution using hot-wire anemometry on the measurements of the streamwise velocity is dealt with in the last part. The viscous scaled hot-wire length, L+, has been found to exert a strong impact on the probability density distribution (pdf) of the streamwise velocity, and hence its higher order moments, over the entire buffer region and also the lower region of the log region. For varying Reynolds numbers spatial resolution effects act against the trend imposed by the Reynolds number. A systematic reduction of the mean velocity with increasing L+ over the entire classical buffer region and beyond has been found. A reduction of around 0.3 uƬ, where uƬ is the friction velocity, has been deduced for L+=60 compared to L+=15. Neglecting this effect can lead to a seemingly Reynolds number dependent  buffer or log region. This should be taken into consideration, for instance, in the debate, regarding the prevailing influence of viscosity above the buffer region at high Reynolds numbers. We also conclude that the debate concerning the universality of the pdf within the overlap region has been artificially complicated due to the ignorance of spatial resolution effects beyond the classical buffer region on the velocity fluctuations. / QC 20100820

Agitated dispersions of one liquid in another immiscible liquid are widely used in chemical industry in operations such as liquid-liquid extraction, suspension polymerisation, and blending of polymers. When holdup of the dispersed phase is increased, in an effort to increase the productivity, at a critical holdup, the dispersed phase catastrophically becomes the continuous phase and vice versa. This phenomenon is known as phase inversion. Although the inversion phenomenon has been studied off and on over the past few decades, the mechanism of phase inversion (PI) has yet not become clear. These studies have however brought out many interesting aspects of PI, besides unravelling the effect of physical and operational variables on PL Experiments show that oil-in-water (o/w) and water-in-oil (w/o) dispersions behave very differently, e.g water drops in w/o dispersions contain oil droplets in them, but oil drops in o/w dispersions contain none, dispersed phase hold up at which inversion occurs increases with agitation speed for w/o dispersions but decreases for o/w dispersions. A common feature of both types of dispersions however is that as agitation speed is increased to high values, inversion holdups reach a constant value. A further increase in agitation speed does not change inversion hold up. Although this finding was first reported a long time ago, the implications it may have not received any attentions. In fact, the work reported in the literature since then does not even mention it. The present work shows that this finding has profound implications. Starting with the finding that at high agitation speed inversion hold up does not change with agitation speed, the present work shows that inversion hold up also does not change with agitator diameter, type of agitator and vessel diameter. In these experiments, carried out in agitated vessel, energy was introduced as a point source. The experiments carried out with turbulent flow in annular region of two coaxial cylinders, inner one rotating, in which energy is introduced nearly uniformly throughout the system, show that the inversion holdup remains unchanged. These results indicate that constant values of inversion holdups for a given liquid-liquid systems (o/w and w/o) are properties of the liquid-liquid systems alone, independent of geometrical and operational parameters. A new hypothesis is proposed to explain the new findings. Phase inversion is considered to occur as a result of imbalance between breakup and coalescence of drops. Electrolytes, which affect only coalescence of drops, were therefore added to the system to investigate the effect of altering coalescence of drops on phase inversion. The experiments performed in the presence of electrolyte KI at various concentrations indicate that addition of electrolyte increases the inversion holdup for both o/w and w/o dispersions for three types of systems: non polar-water, polar-water and immiscible organic-organic. Higher the concentration of electrolyte used, higher was the holdup required for phase inversion. These findings indicate that while the addition of electrolyte increases coalescence of drops in lean dispersions, it has exactly opposite effect on imbalance of breakage and coalescence of drops at high holdups near phase inversion point. The opposite effect of electrolytes in lean and concentrated dispersions could be explained qualitatively, but only in part in the light of a new theory, involving multi-particle interactions. The phase inversion phenomenon is quantified in a simple manner by testing the breakage and coalescence rate expressions available in literature. It has been found that, equilibrium drop size (where breakage and coalescence events are in dynamic equilibrium) approaches infinity near phase inversion holdup which is not an ex perimentally observed fact. To capture the catastrophic nature of phase inversion, two steady state approach is proposed. The two steady states namely the stable steady state and unstable steady state, are achieved by modifying the expression for coalescence frequency on the basis of (i) shear coalescence mechanism and, (ii) recognising the fact that at high dispersed phase holdup the droplets are already in contact with each other at all times and hence rendering the second order coales cence process to a first order one. Using two steady states approach, catastrophic phase inversion is shown to occur at finite drop size.

Aujourd'hui, avec l'amélioration des puissances de calcul informatique, la simulation numérique est devenue un outil essentiel pour la prédiction des phénomènes physiques et l'optimisation des procédés industriels. La modélisation de ces phénomènes pose des difficultés scientifiques car leur résolution implique des temps de calcul très longs malgré l'utilisation d'importantes ressources informatiques.Dans cette thèse, on s'intéresse à la résolution de problèmes complexes couplant écoulements et transferts thermiques. Les problèmes physiques étant fortement anisotropes, il est nécessaire d'avoir un maillage avec une résolution très élevée pour obtenir un bon niveau de précision. Cela implique de longs temps de calcul. Ainsi il faut trouver un compromis entre précision et efficacité. Le développement de méthodes d'adaptation en temps et en espace est motivé par la volonté de faire des applications réelles et de limiter les inconvénients inhérents aux méthodes de résolution non adaptatives en terme de précision et d'efficacité. La résolution de problèmes multi-échelles instationnaires sur un maillage uniforme avec un nombre de degrés de liberté limité est souvent incapable de capturer les petites échelles, nécessite des temps de calcul longs et peut aboutir à des résultats incorrects. Ces difficultés ont motivé le développement de méthodes de raffinement local avec une meilleure précision aux endroits adéquats. L'adaptation en temps et en espace peut donc être considérée comme une composante essentielle de ces méthodes.L'approche choisie dans cette thèse consiste en l'utilisation de méthodes éléments finis stabilisées et le développement d'outils d'adaptation espace-temps pour améliorer la précision et l'efficacité des simulations numériques.Le développement de la méthode adaptative est basé sur un estimateur d'erreur sur les arrêtes du maillage afin de localiser les régions du domaine de calcul présentant de forts gradients ainsi que les couches limites. Ensuite une métrique décrivant la taille de maille en chaque noeud dans les différentes directions est calculée. Afin d'améliorer l'efficacité des calculs la construction de cette métrique prend en compte un nombre fixe de noeuds et aboutit à une répartition et une orientation optimale des éléments du maillage. Cette approche est étendue à une formulation espace-temps où les maillages et les pas de temps optimaux sont prédits sur des intervalles de temps en vue de contrôler l'erreur d'interpolation sur la domaine de calcul. / Nowadays, with the increase in computational power, numerical modeling has become an intrinsic tool for predicting physical phenomena and developing engineering designs. The modeling of these phenomena poses scientific complexities the resolution of which requires considerable computational resources and long lasting calculations.In this thesis, we are interested in the resolution of complex long time and large scale heat transfer and fluid flow problems. When the physical phenomena exhibit sharp anisotropic features, a good level of accuracy requires a high mesh resolution, hence hindering the efficiency of the simulation. Therefore a compromise between accuracy and efficiency shall be adopted. The development of space and time adaptive adaptation techniques was motivated by the desire to devise realistic configurations and to limit the shortcomings of the traditional non-adaptive resolutions in terms of lack of solution's accuracy and computational efficiency. Indeed, the resolution of unsteady problems with multi-scale features on a prescribed uniform mesh with a limited number of degrees of freedom often fails to capture the fine scale physical features, have excessive computational cost and might produce incorrect results. These difficulties brought forth investigations towards generating meshes with local refinements where higher resolution was needed. Space and time adaptations can thus be regarded as essential ingredients in this recipe.The approach followed in this work consists in applying stabilized finite element methods and the development of space and time adaptive tools to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the numerical simulations.The derivation process starts with an edge-based error estimation for locating the regions, in the computational domain, presenting sharp gradients, inner and boundary layers. This is followed by the construction of nodal metric tensors that prescribe, at each node in the spatial mesh, mesh sizes and the directions along which these sizes are to be imposed. In order to improve the efficiency of computations, this construction takes into account a fixed number of nodes and generates an optimal distribution and orientation of the mesh elements. The approach is extended to a space-time adaptation framework, whereby optimal meshes and time-step sizes for slabs of time are constructed in the view of controlling the global interpolation error over the computation domain.

Turbulence is ubiquitous in the flows of fluids and plasmas. This thesis is devoted to studies of the statistical properties of turbulence in the three-dimensional (3D) Hall magnetohydrodynamic (Hall-MHD) equations, the two-dimensional (2D) MHD equations, the one-dimensional (1D) hyperviscous Burgers equation, and the 3D Navier-Stokes equations. Chapter 1 contains a brief introduction to statistically homogeneous and isotropic turbulence. This is followed by an over-view of the equations we study in the subsequent chapters, the motivation for the studies and a summary of problems we investigate in chapters 2-6. In Chapter 2 we present our study of Hall-MHD turbulence [1]. We show that a shell-model version of the 3D Hall-MHD equations provides a natural theoretical model for investigating the multiscaling behaviors of velocity and magnetic structure functions. We carry out extensive numerical studies of this shell model, obtain the scaling exponents for its structure functions, in both the low-k and high-k power-law ranges of 3D Hall-MHD, and find that the extended-self-similarity procedure is helpful in extracting the multiscaling nature of structure functions in the high-k regime, which otherwise appears to display simple scaling. Our results shed light on intriguing solar-wind measurements. In Chapter 3 we present our study of the inverse-cascade regime in two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic turbulence [2]. We present a detailed direct numerical simulation (DNS) of statistically steady, homogeneous, isotropic, two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (2D MHD) turbulence. Our study concentrates on the inverse cascade of the magnetic vector potential. We examine the dependence of the statistical properties of such turbulence on dissipation and friction coefficients. We extend earlier work significantly by calculating fluid and magnetic spectra, probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the velocity, magnetic, vorticity, current, stream-function, and magnetic-vector-potential fields and their increments. We quantify the deviations of these PDFs from Gaussian ones by computing their flatnesses and hyperflatnesses. We also present PDFs of the Okubo-Weiss parameter, which distinguishes between vortical and extensional flow regions, and its magnetic analog. We show that the hyperflatnesses of PDFs of the increments of the stream-function and the magnetic vector potential exhibit significant scale dependence and we examine the implication of this for the multiscaling of structure functions. We compare our results with those of earlier studies. In Chapter 4 we compare the statistical properties of 2D MHD turbulence for two different energy injection scales. We present systematic DNSs of statistically steady 2D MHD turbulence. Our two DNSs are distinguished by kinj, the wave number at which we inject energy into the system. In our first DNS (run R1), kinj = 2 and, in the second (run R2) kinj = 250. We show that various statistical properties of the turbulent states in the runs R1 and R2 are strikingly different The nature of energy spectrum, probability distribution functions, and topological structures are compared for the two runs R1 and R2 are found to be strikingly different. In Chapter 5 we study the hyperviscous Burgers equation for very high α, order of hyperviscosity [3]. We show, by using direct numerical simulations and theory, how, by increasing α in equations of hydrodynamics, there is a transition from a dissipative to a conservative system. This remarkable result, already conjectured for the asymptotic case α →∞ [U. Frisch et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 144501 (2008)], is now shown to be true for any large, but finite, value of α greater than a crossover value α crossover. We thus provide a self-consistent picture of how dissipative systems, under certain conditions, start behaving like conservative systems, and hence elucidate the subtle connection between equilibrium statistical mechanics and out-of-equilibrium turbulent flows. In Chapter 6 we show how to use asymptotic-extrapolation and Richardson extrapolation methods to extract the exponents ξ p that characterize the dependence of the order-p moments of the velocity gradients on the Reynolds number Re. To use these extrapolation methods we must have high-precision data for such moments. We obtain these high-precision data by carrying out the most extensive, quadruple precision, pseudospectral DNSs of the Navier-Stokes equation.

Le traitement des conditions aux limites et la modélisation fine des interactions de sous-maille ont été abordés dans cette thèse. La formulation caractéristique des conditions aux limites a été analysée et une nouvelle procédure 3D-NSCBC est proposée qui autorise la prise en compte de l’évolution de la vitesse et de la pression dans le plan des frontières, afin d’introduire le caractère tridimensionnel de l’écoulement dans les conditions limites. Des nouvelles formulations pour resoudre le couplage des ondes caractéristiques au niveau des arêtes et des coins ont été développées. Dans le cadre de la Simulation des Grandes Échelles, pour reproduire correctement la dynamique de la turbulence à la paroi et pour mieux prendre en compte l'anisotropie du tenseur des contraintes de sous-maille, un modèle structural fondé sur l'hypothèse de similarité est développé pour des écoulements modérément compressibles et validé sur la simulation d'un jet rond en impaction sur une paroi plane. / The treatment of boundary conditions and sub-grid scale interactions’ modeling, with particular attention to the asymptotic behavior near the wall, were addressed in this thesis. The characteristic formulation of boundary conditions has been analyzed and a novel procedure 3D-NSCBC is proposed, which, accounting for the evolution of velocity and pressure on the boundary planes, allows a better representation of the three-dimensional character of the flow at the boundary. New formulations to solve characteristic wave coupling on edges and corners are developed. Within the framework of the Large-Eddy Simulation, in order to give a correct reproduction of near-wall turbulence dynamics and in order to better account for the sub-grid scale stress tensor’s anisotropy, a structural model based on the similarity hypothesis has been developed for weakly compressible flows and validated on the simulation of a round jet impinging over a flat plane.

No description available.

Accuracy in turbulence modeling remains a hurdle in the widespread use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) as a tool for furthering fluids dynamics research. Meanwhile, computational power remains a significant concern for solving real-life wall-bounded flows, which portray a wide range of length and time scales. The tools for turbulence analysis at our disposal, in the decreasing order of their accuracy, include Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS), Large Eddy Simulation (LES), and Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) based models. While DNS and LES would remain exorbitantly expensive options for simulating high Reynolds number flows for the foreseeable future, RANS is and continues to be a viable option utilized in commercial and academic endeavors. In the first part of the present work, flow over the back-step test case was solved, and parametric studies for various parameters such as re-circulation length (X_r), coefficient of pressure (C_p), and coefficient of skin friction (C_f) are presented and validated with experimental results. The back-step setup was chosen as the test case as turbulent modeling of flow past backward-facing step has been pivotal to understand separated flows better. Turbulence modeling is done on the test case using RANS (k-ε and k-ω models), and LES modeling, for different values of Reynolds number (Re ∈ {2, 2.5, 3, 3.5} × 10⁴) and expansion ratios (ER ∈ {1.5, 2, 2.5, 3}). The LES results show good agreement with experimental results, and the discrepancy between the RANS results and experimental data was highlighted. The results obtained in the first part reveal a pattern of under-prediction noticed with using RANS-based models to analyze canonical setups such as the backward-facing step. The LES results show close proximity to experimental data, as mentioned above, which makes it an excellent source of training data for the machine learning analysis outlined in the second part. The highlighted discrepancy and the inability of the RANS model to accurately predict significant flow properties create the need for a better model. The purpose of the second part of the present study is to make systematic efforts to minimize the error between flow properties from RANS modeling and experimental data, as seen in the first part. A machine learning model was constructed in the second part of the present study to predict the eddy viscosity parameter (μt) as a function of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and dissipation rate (ε) derived from LES data, effectively working as an ad hoc eddy-viscosity based turbulence model. The machine learning model does not work well with the flow domain as a whole, but a zonal analysis reveals a better prediction of eddy viscosity than the whole domain. Among the zones, the area in the vicinity of the re-circulation zone gives the best result. The obtained results point towards the need for a zonal analysis for the better performance of the machine learning model, which will enable us to improve RANS predictions by developing a reduced order turbulence model.