Impact of difference between explicit and implicit second-order time integration schemes on isotropic/anisotropic steady incompressible turbulence field

Abstract

This study presents the impact of the difference between the implicit and explicit time integration methods on a steady turbulent flow field. In contrast to the explicit time integration method, the implicit time integration method may produce significant kinetic energy conservation error because the widely used spatial difference method for discretizing the governing equations is explicit with respect to time. In this study, the second-order Crank-Nicolson method is used as the implicit time integration method, and the fourth-order Runge-Kutta, second-order Runge-Kutta and second-order Adams-Bashforth methods are used as explicit time integration methods. In the present study, both isotropic and anisotropic steady turbulent fields are analyzed with two values of the Reynolds number. The turbulent kinetic energy in the steady turbulent field is hardly affected by the kinetic energy conservation error. The rms values of static pressure fluctuation are significantly sensitive to the kinetic energy conservation error. These results are examined by varying the time increment value. These results are also discussed by visualizing the large scale turbulent vortex structure.