Influence of domain size on direct numerical simulation of turbulent flow in a moderately curved concentric annular pipe

Abstract

Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulent flow in a concentric annular pipe was performed using a pseudo-spectral method computer code. In order to study the effects of computational domain size on the turbulence statistics, 12 test cases of different domain sizes are compared. The characteristics of the velocity field are examined at two different Reynolds numbers. It is observed that the predictive accuracy of the first- and second-order statistics is sensitive to the axial and azimuthal domain sizes. It is also found that the scales and dynamics of turbulence structures vary with the surface curvature of the concave and convex walls. The characteristic length scales of the turbulence structures are identified through a spectral analysis, and it is observed that a minimum computational domain is required in order to accurately capture the near-wall streaky and hairpin structures of a concentric annular pipe flow using DNS.