Investigating the Effect of the Closure in Partially-Averaged Navier–Stokes Equations

Abstract

The importance of the turbulence closure to the modeling accuracy of the partially-averaged Navier–Stokes equations (PANS) is investigated in prediction of the flow around a circular cylinder at Reynolds number of 3900. A series of PANS calculations at various degrees of physical resolution is conducted using three Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations (RANS)-based closures: the standard, shear-stress transport (SST), and turbulent/nonturbulent (TNT) k–ω models. The latter is proposed in this work. The results illustrate the dependence of PANS on the closure. At coarse physical resolutions, a narrower range of scales is resolved so that the influence of the closure on the simulations accuracy increases significantly. Among all closures, PANS–TNT achieves the lowest comparison errors. The reduced sensitivity of this closure to freestream turbulence quantities and the absence of auxiliary functions from its governing equations are certainly contributing to this result. It is demonstrated that the use of partial turbulence quantities in such auxiliary functions calibrated for total turbulent (RANS) quantities affects their behavior. On the other hand, the successive increase of physical resolution reduces the relevance of the closure, causing the convergence of the three models toward the same solution. This outcome is achieved once the physical resolution and closure guarantee the precise replication of the spatial development of the key coherent structures of the flow.