Effect of turbulent model closure and type of inlet boundary condition on a Large Eddy Simulation of a non-reacting jet with co-flow stream

Abstract

In this paper, the behavior and turbulence structure of a non-reacting jet with a co-flow stream is described by means of Large Eddy Simulations (LES) carried out with the computational tool OpenFoam. In order to study the influence of the sub-grid scale (SGS) model on the main flow statistics, Smagorinsky (SMAG) and One Equation Eddy (OEE) approaches are used to model the smallest scales involved in the turbulence of the jet. The impact of cell size and turbulent inlet boundary condition in resulting velocity profiles is analyzed as well. Four different tasks have been performed to accomplish these objectives. Firstly, the simulation of a turbulent pipe, which is necessary to generate and map coherent turbulence structure into the inlet of the non-reacting jet domain. Secondly, a structured mesh based on hexahedrons has been built for the jet and its co-flow. The third task consists on performing four different simulations. In those, mapping statistics from the turbulent pipe is compared with the use of fluctuating inlet boundary condition available in OpenFoam; OEE and SMAG approaches are contrasted; and the effect of changing cell size is investigated. Finally, as forth task, the obtained results are compared with experimental data. As main conclusions of this comparison, it has been proved that the fluctuating boundary condition requires much less computational cost, but some inaccuracies were found close to the nozzle. Also, both SGS models are capable to simulate this kind of jets with a co-flow stream with exactitude.