Applications in CFD

Comparison of
Turbulent Models

Objectives:
Introduction to Turbulence
Why we need Turbulence Modelling
Types of Turbulent Models
Application of Turbulent Models in CFD
Comparison of different Turbulent model

Turbulence and Continuum Mechanics

The dissipation length scale is is small, but remains larger than the mean free path .

Therefor the continuum model can be applied.

The Knudsen number is the ration of free mean path to length of interest.

For the medium to be considered as Continuous.

In turbulence, smallest length scale is known as Kolmogorov scale .

Introduction to Turbulence
A Dissipative Flow state characterized by nonlinear fluctuating threedimensional vorticity.
Randomness of transport variable with respect to time and space
Strong mixing
Wide range of time scales and length scales.
Eddies or vorticity are the basic entities of Turbulence flow.

Is the flow Turbulent?

External Flows

Internal flows

Where:

Other factors such as surface

disturbances originated from
surface condition may lead to
transition at lower Reynolds
number.

Energy Cascading in Turbulence Flow

1. Large Eddies extract Energy from the mean flow.
2. It will transfer energy to next smaller length scale
eddies
3. The process is continued until the energy is
dissipated by smallest length scale eddies
4. Energy Transfer process as shown in the figure.

https://www.racfd.com/en/articles/ansys-fluentconcept/turbulence-modeling.html

Energy cascading

Rate of Extraction of turbulent KE

from Mean Flow per unit mass:

Rate of Dissipation of Kinetic Energy:

Where and are velocity and length scale of smallest
eddies.
For Dynamic Balance:

By Mathematical Derivation:

Kolmogorov
Length scale

Vorticity Dynamics in Turbulent Flows

Navier
Stoke Equation

Assuming there is no Body Force

Local and
Convective
Acceleration
components

Visco
us
Term

Pressur
e
Gradie
nt

Taking Curl on both sides and after mathematical manipulation;

Where,
Total Derivative Source of
Vorticity

Diffusion
Term

What is the source of vorticity in turbulent flow??

Consider
a Large Eddy
Scale
In les is negligible

Consider for an analogy

When compared this equation with vorticity equation

Then is negative.
That is vortex element has
less moment of inertia.

1.

3.
This term should have
similar physical meaning.

Notes:
1.Interaction will increase
with other vortex element
2.Vortex stretching
Intensification of vorticity
with stretching of vortex
element
3.Source term appears in
vorticity transport equation is
due to stretching of vortex
element.

Statistical Representation of Turbulent Flows

As shown in the figure

This is called Reynolds de-composition.

Types of Mean or Average:
Time Averaging

Space Averaging:

Types of Turbulence
Homogenous Turbulence:
Turbulent statistics are independent of co-ordinate translation.
Isotropic Turbulence:
Turbulence statistics are independent of rotation, reflections and translation of co-ordinates .

General properties of Turbulent Quantities

For
any turbulent quantity f:

For any two turbulent quantities:

Reynolds average Navier stokes(RANS) equation

Continuity Equation:
Substitute and taking average of the equation:

Continuity equation for mean flow

Continuity equation for the turbulent

fluctuation field

(1)

Assuming the constant density flows

Reynolds average Navier stokes(RANS) equation

*Manipulation made by adding,

Substitute , ,
And taking the average of the whole equation we get the following equation:

The above Equation is known as Reynolds Average Navier Stokes(RANS) equation.

Term A

RANS
The process of averaging has introduced new term( Term A)

has a units of stress.

Physical significance of Term A, Let us consider Velocity fluctuation along x-direction that can interact with
fluctuation along y-direction therefore there can be a momentum transfer. So there is a extra component of
stress.
Total stress is given by
The viscous shear stress dominates near the surface while the turbulent (Reynolds) shear stress is significant
some distance away from the surface.

Reynolds
stress or Turbulent
stress. It is also represented
by . This is a second order
Tensor

RANS
In the RANS equations, there are six additional unknowns:

,,, , ,

Closure problem in turbulence necessity of turbulence modelling:

In the RANS equation, Reynolds stress gives an additional six terms but there are no explicit governing
differential equations for the additional unknowns.
3 Velocity components, 1 pressure term and 6 Reynolds stress terms
Therefore there are 10 unknowns in RANS.
But No. of equations are 4 (1 Continuity + 3 momentum)
The problem is indeterminate.
So there is a need to close the problem the equation mathematically to obtain the solution. This is known as
closure problem in Turbulence.
The turbulence modelling tries to represent the Reynolds stresses in terms of the time-averaged velocity
components.
The common turbulence models are classified on the basis of the number of additional transport equations that
need to be solved along with the RANS Equations

Turbulence Models in Fluent

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~nwb/lectures/Goo
dPracticeCFD/Articles/Turbulence_Notes_Fluentv6.3.06.pdf

One Equation Models

First
order Models:
These models are based on analogy between laminar and turbulent flows. These models are also called EddyViscosity Model:
The analogy is given by:

Note:
is the turbulent viscosity
is the turbulent kinetic energy
* So now the problem is to model the

Turbulent viscosity

Based on dimensional analysis, can be calculated from a turbulence time scale( or velocity scale) and a length scale.
Turbulent kinetic Energy(
Turbulence dissipation rate +
Specific Dissipation rate /
Each Turbulence models has different approach to calculate .
Spalart-Allmaras:
Solve the transport equation for a modified turbulent viscosity.
Standard , RNG , Realizable
These models solve the transport equation for both
)
Standard , SST
Solves the transport Equation for
)

 Spalart Allmaras
The transport variable in Spalart Allmaras model, ,is similar to the turbulent kinematic viscosity except in the
near-wall(viscosity affected) region. The transport for is

Where,
is the production of turbulent viscosity and is the destruction of turbulent viscosity that occurs nearwall region due to wall blocking and viscous damping.
and are the constants
In the Spalart Allmaras model kinetic energy is not calculated therefore the term in the turbulent
viscosity is neglected.

* The Spalart Equation presented here is taken

from fluent theory Guide

Two Equation Model:

Models
Standard
RNG
Realizable
All the above three models have similar forms with two
transport equation of
The main difference is method of
calculating turbulent kinetic energy.
The turbulent Prandtl numbers governing the turbulent
diffusion of
The generation and destruction term in equation


Transport Equation for
Transport Equation for :

Transport Equation
(

Generation of Turbulence Kinetic Energy

=
= Generation of Turbulence Kinetic Energy due to Buoyancy
= contribution of fluctuating dilatation in compressible turbulence to the overall dissipation rate.
, , are constant and are the Prandtl numbers for respectively.


RNG K The RNG model has an additional in its equations that improves the accuracy for rapidly strained flows.

The effect of swirl on turbulence is included in the RNG model, enhancing accuracy for swirling flows.

The RNG model provides the analytical formula for turbulent Prandtl numbers, while the standard model uses
user-specified, constant values.
The standard K- is only for high Reynolds number, the RNG theory provides an analytically-derived
differential for effective viscosity that accounts for low Reynolds number effects.
*These feature make the RNG model more accurate than standard K- model and reliable for a wide range of
flows.

The model do not contain terms which are undefined at the wall. They can be integrated to the wall without
using wall functions.
They are accurate and robust for a wide range of boundary layer flows with pressure gradient.
Fluent has two models in K Standard K1. Most widely used in aerospace and turbomachinery.
2. Several sub models are present to include the effects of compressibility, transitional flows.
. SST K- (Menter, 1994)
1. The SST K- model uses blending function to gradually transition from the standard K- model near the wall
to high Reynolds number version of k- in the outer portion of the boundary layer.
2. Contains a modified turbulent viscosity formulation to account for the transport effects of the principal
turbulent shear stress.

LES(Large Eddy Simulation)

Les has been most successful for high end application where RANS
models fail to meet the needs. For example:
Combustion
Mixing
External Aerodynamics(Flow around bluff bodies)

Results from Literature

Kim et al. 2014 compared experimental and computational results for
different turbulence models.
As shown in the figure the RNG k-e model proved to be best
applicable for modelling stream-wise velocity compared to other
models.

Comparisons of streamwise velocity components

along cross lines at x/D=1, x/D=3, x/D=5, x/D=7,
and x/D=10. Solid line: standard k- turbulence
model, +: Experimental data of Sudo et al. (1998).

Comparison of streamwise velocity profiles from different turbulence models

along symmetric line at x/D = 0

Thank you