Generation of Turbulent Inlet Velocity Conditions for Large Eddy Simulations

Abstract

We present a methodology for the generation of synthesized turbulence at inflow boundaries when simulating fluid flow problems using the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) method. A key point of the proposed technique is that the statistical properties of turbulence are properly represented, keeping even the anisotropy characteristics that the turbulent flow may possess. The computational cost is comparable to the other approaches in which this method is based.
The strategy of imposing conditions on the inlet velocity field through turbulence synthesis was implemented in the parallel multiphysics code called PETSc-FEM (http://www.cimec.org.ar/petscfem) primarily targeted to bi-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) finite elements computations on general unstructured grids.
Several tests were conducted in order to validate and evaluate the method describing the flow conditions that take place in “real-life” applications, such as inside a low speed wind tunnel test section at high Reynolds number.