Comparison of Turbulence Models for Single Sphere Simulation Study Under Supercritical Fluid Condition

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, the comparison of turbulence models for fluid flow past single sphere under supercritical conditions is reported. Firstly, Dixon et al.’s models [1], which are under non-supercritical conditions, were used as benchmarks to validate the simulated results. Two turbulence models namely RNG k-ε and SST k-ω models parameters were fine-tuned accordingly in order to obtain almost comparable results generated by Dixon et al.’s models [1]. The simulation works were then extended to simulate flow of supercritical carbon dioxide. The second part of this paper, therefore, presents a comparative study of the turbulence models i. e. standard k-ε, RNG k-ε, realizable k-ε and SST k-ω models. This study emphasises on the predictions and evaluations of the velocity profiles at different flow regimes namely recirculation, recovery and near-wake. Simulations were carried out to determine the velocity profiles at subcritical and supercritical conditions by varying Reynolds numbers (2000 and 20,000), pressures (65 and 80 bar) and temperatures (283.15 and 308.15K). Simulation results indicate that the predicted results are consistent with the literature data. Interesting flow features were identified for all the simulations. The results of this study also reveal that the SST k-ω turbulence model was able to better capture the flow characteristics near-wake of the sphere.