Direct Numerical simulation of turbulent pipe flow up to a Reynolds number

of 61,000 A Summary

CFD ASSIGNMENT

SOURCE
13th European Turbulence Conference(ETC13)
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 318(2011)042045
IOP Publishing
By Bendiks Han Boersma Department of process and Energy Delft
University of Technology
Leeghwaterstraat 44 2628 CA Delft Netherlands

CH. ASAAD
MS MECHANICAL ENGINEERING ROLL NO ME-002
Direct Numerical simulation of turbulent pipe flow up to a Reynolds number of 61,000 A
Summary
The paper aims to develop a highly accurate numerical model that is going to be able to simulate
using a direct numerical simulation the behaviour of flows with Reynolds numbers
corresponding to the value of 61,000 that corresponds with experimental data. A limited number
of studies using DNS (Direct numerical method) have been carried out. The experimental results
of turbulent flow have been highly documented. Hence a large amount of experimental data is
available for the validation of results. Also there is a certain unresolved question present which
needs to be addressed that weather the peak of the axial rms decreases or increases with
Reynolds number since previous studies have shown dissimilar results.

The high Reynolds number turbulent behaviour is observed by using Fourier expansions in the
axial and circumferential directions and 6th order staggered compact finite difference in the
normal direction. The governing incompressible naiver strokes equations were normalized with
friction velocity and pipe diameter. Due to large wave number phenomenon a 6 th order compact
finite difference method is used instead of the 2nd order acute finite difference. As the grid in the
radial direction is non uniform a relationship between the derivative on the uniform and non-
uniform grids are related and mapped. A simple relation for the uniform grid is used is used so
that the derivative on the non-uniform grid is calculated analytically while the derivative on the
uniform grid is calculated with staggered compact finite difference. This takes care of the special
discretization. The velocity is integrated to an intermediate level using Adams-Bashforth
method. Using the same scheme the pressure at a certain time level is used to calculate the
velocity at a corresponding time level. This gives an algorithm with an explicit advection and
diffusion step with third order accuracy for velocity and 2nd order for time. The pressure poison
equation is solved with Fourier transform in the axial and circumferential direction. Using a well
resolved simulation of a previous research this model is validated. The entire study will not be
simulated. The acquisition of results will begin by running simulation on a coarse mesh after
this 10 times scales the results are interpolated to a finer mesh on with the computations are
continued for slightly different parameters and then finally the results are again interpolated to
the final mesh. The simulation is carried out for Reynolds number s of 24500 and 61000 for
which extensive experimental data is available.

The DNS algorithms performance is superior to previous ones developed as suggested by the
good agreement between the results on a much higher resolution between our data and that of the
experimentally validated one. The results at Reynolds number of 24500 show excellent
agreement with the experimental data. The high Reynolds case shows a non-vanishing auto
correlation function for he axial velocity component. This is suggested to be an indication of
long stream wise structures. A slight decrease in the peak value of the axial rms is seen which
does not agree with one of the previously published researches but is in agreement with an even
more previous review article.