Large Eddy Simulation of Turbulent Axial Flow Along an Array of Rods

Abstract

Large eddy simulation (LES) is employed in this paper to model the axial flow along a circular array of rods with a focus on anisotropic large-scale turbulence. The circular array consists of four whole rods and eight half rods, with a pitch-to-diameter ratio of 1.08. A dynamic Smagorinsky model with SIMPLE coupling method and a bounded central difference scheme are used to reduce numerical errors. The high demands for computations of the three-dimensional turbulent flows are afforded through parallel processing and utilization of 20 processors. The numerical results obtained using LES are compared with independent experimental data available in the literature; good agreement is achieved. The LES model was developed to accurately predict (i) the dependence of turbulence intensity and dominant frequency on the gap size and (ii) the turbulence structure in different directions.