Numerical methods for large-eddy simulation in general co-ordinates

Abstract

Large scale unsteady motions in many practical engineering flows play a very important role and it is very unlikely that these unsteady flow features can be captured within the framework of Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes approach. Large-eddy simulation (LES) has become, arguably, the only practical numerical tool for predicting those flows more accurately since it is still not realistic to apply DNS to practical engineering flows with the current and near future available computing power.

Numerical methods for the LES of turbulent flows in complex geometry have been developed and applied to predict practical engineering flows successfully. The method is based on body-fitted curvilinear co-ordinates with the contravariant velocity components of the general Navier–Stokes equations discretized on a staggered orthogonal mesh. For incompressible flow simulations the main source of computational expense is due to the solution of a Poisson equation for pressure. This is especially true for flows in complex geometry. A multigrid 3D pressure solver is developed to speed up the solution. In addition, the Poisson equation for pressure takes a simpler form with no cross-derivatives when orthogonal mesh is used and hence resulting in increased convergence rate and producing more accurate solutions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.