Large Eddy Simulation Research Articles

Improving the estimate of higher-order moments from lidar observations near the top of the convective boundary layer

Abstract. Ground-based lidar data have proven extremely useful for profiling the convective boundary layer (CBL). Many groups have derived higher-order moments (e.g., variance, skewness, fluxes) from high-temporal-resolution lidar data using an autocovariance approach. However, these analyses are highly uncertain near the CBL top when the depth of the CBL (zi) is changing during the analysis period. This is because the autocovariance approach is usually applied to constant height levels and the character of the eddies is changing on either side of the changing CBL top. Here, a new approach is presented wherein the autocovariance analysis is performed on a normalized height grid, with a temporally smoothed zi. Output from a large eddy simulation model demonstrates that deriving higher-order moments from time series on a normalized height grid has better agreement with the slab-averaged quantities than the moments derived from the original height grid.

The Impact of Temperature on the Adiabaticity and Coverage of a Single Shallow Cumulus Cloud

AbstractThe uncertainty of climate projection is significantly related to warm cloud feedback, which involves a complex interplay of various mechanisms. However, it is hard to unentangle temperature's impact on a single cloud with experiments, since the cloud dynamics always covary with environmental thermodynamical conditions. In this study, we investigate a simulated single shallow cumulus cloud's response to temperature using two perturbation methods, namely “uniform” and “buoyancy‐fixed”, the latter of which keeps the buoyancy profile unchanged in temperature perturbation. High‐resolution large eddy simulations show that uniform warming significantly increases cloud buoyancy, reducing cloud adiabaticity. If buoyancy is fixed, warming only reduces cloud area, leaving adiabatic fraction almost unchanged. Such a response can be explained by the Clausius‐Clapeyron effect with an idealized 1D diffusion model, showing that warming increases the cloud‐environment absolute humidity difference more than the increase in cloud liquid water content, resulting in a faster loss in both cloud coverage and total liquid water solely by lateral mixing. The responses of cloud coverage and total liquid water counteract, making adiabatic fraction insensitive to temperature change. Our work shows that the cloud adiabatic fraction's response to temperature is sensitive to the perturbed structure of the boundary layer, and the cloud coverage reduction by diffusion acts as a positive cloud feedback mechanism in addition to the adjustment processes of the boundary layer.

How Does Turbulent Organized Structure Influence Surface Energy Balance Closure? A Study Utilizing Large-Eddy Simulation

How Does Turbulent Organized Structure Influence Surface Energy Balance Closure? A Study Utilizing Large-Eddy Simulation

Filtered partial differential equations: a robust surrogate constraint in physics-informed deep learning framework

Embedding physical knowledge into neural network (NN) training has been a hot topic. However, when facing the complex real world, most of the existing methods still strongly rely on the quantity and quality of observation data. Furthermore, the NNs often struggle to converge when the solution to the real equation is very complex. Inspired by large eddy simulation in computational fluid dynamics, we propose an improved method based on filtering. We analysed the causes of the difficulties in physics-informed machine learning, and proposed a surrogate constraint (filtered partial differential equation, FPDE) of the original physical equations to reduce the influence of noisy and sparse observation data. In the noise and sparsity experiment, the proposed FPDE models (which are optimized by FPDE constraints) have better robustness than the conventional PDE models. Experiments demonstrate that the FPDE model can obtain the same quality solution with 100 % higher noise and 12 % quantity of observation data of the baseline. Besides, two groups of real measurement data are used to show the FPDE improvements in real cases. The final results show that the FPDE still gives more physically reasonable solutions when facing the incomplete equation problem and the extremely sparse and high-noise conditions. The proposed FPDE constraint is helpful for merging real-world experimental data into physics-informed training, and it works effectively in two real-world experiments: simulating cell movement in scratches and blood velocity in vessels.

Dynamic large-eddy simulation of hypersonic transition delay over broadband wall impedance

Three-dimensional numerical simulations of hypersonic boundary layer transition delay due to porosity representative of carbon-fibre-reinforced carbon-matrix ceramics (C/C) were carried out on a 7 $^{\circ {}}$ half-angle cone for unit Reynolds numbers $Re_m=2.43 \times 10^6$ – $6.40\times 10^6\ \text {m}^{-1}$ , at the free-stream Mach number $M_\infty =7.4$ , for both sharp and 2.5 mm nose tip radii. A broadband time-domain impedance boundary condition was used to model the acoustic effects of the porous surface on the flow field. A quasi-spectral sub-filter-scale dynamic closure was adopted to stabilize the computations upon turbulent breakdown under extreme cooling conditions, with wall-to-adiabatic temperature ratio of $T_{w}/ T_{ad} \simeq 0.08 $ , while accurately recovering the growth rates of the unstable modes present in the early transition stages. Good agreement is observed with the reference experimental data, both in terms of the predicted extent of the transition delay and the measured second-mode frequency spectrum. The latter is strongly modulated by the formation of near-wall low-temperature three-dimensional streaks. Pressure disturbances concentrate in corridors of locally thickened boundary layer, with frequencies lower than what predicted by linear theory. Here, trapped wavetrains are formed, which can persist long into the turbulent region. Finally, it is shown that the presence of a porous wall simply shifts the onset of turbulence downstream, without affecting its structure.

Impact of Surface Turbulent Fluxes on the Formation of Roll Vortices in a Mediterranean Windstorm

AbstractRoll vortices can have a significant influence on the exchanges of momentum, sensible heat and moisture throughout the boundary layer. They have been shown to reinforce air‐sea interactions under strong wind conditions. This raises the question of how air‐sea exchanges can, in turn, affect the roll vortices. However, representing surface turbulent fluxes during extreme wind conditions is a major challenge in numerical weather prediction and can lead to large uncertainties in surface wind speed. The sensitivity of rolls to different representations of surface fluxes is investigated using large eddy simulations. The study focuses on Mediterranean windstorm Adrian, where rolls are responsible for the transport of strong winds to the surface. Considering the effects of sea spray increases surface heat fluxes and significantly influences the roll morphology. The rolls become narrower and extend over a greater height, while the downward transport of momentum is intensified and results in higher wind speed near the surface. Roll vortices vanish within a few minutes in the absence of momentum fluxes, which maintain the wind shear necessary for their organization. They also quickly weaken without sensible heat fluxes, which sustain the near‐neutral stratification required for their development. In contrast, latent heat fluxes play a minor role. These findings emphasize the necessity of precisely representing the processes occurring at the air‐sea interface, which do not only affect the thermodynamic surface conditions but also the vertical transport of momentum within the windstorm.

Impacts of inflow turbulence on the flow past a permeable disk

A permeable disk serves as a simplified model for the conversion of wind energy by a horizontal axis wind turbine. In this study, we investigate how inflow turbulence intensity (TI), $I_\infty$ , and inflow turbulence integral length scale, $L_\infty$ , influence the flow recovery in the wake, the capability of a permeable disk in extracting turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) of the incoming flow, and the statistics of wake-added turbulence using large-eddy simulation. The simulated inflows include various TIs (i.e. $I_\infty =2.5\,\%$ – $25\,\%$ ) and integral length scales (i.e. $L_\infty / D =0.5$ – $2.0$ ) for two thrust coefficients. Simulation results show that both inflow TI and integral length scale influence flow recovery via enhanced ejections and sweeps across the wake boundary, with the former strongly affecting the position where the wake starts to recover and the latter mainly on the recovery rate. Moreover, it is shown that increasing $I_\infty$ and $L_\infty$ increases the TKE extraction by the disk, occurring mainly at scales ( $s$ ) greater than $0.5D$ and frequencies depending on the inflow integral length scale. As for the wake-added TKE, the inflow TI mainly affects its intensity, while the inflow integral length scale affects both its intensity and the sensitive frequencies, with the spectral distributions in scale space ( $s$ ) being similar and the peak located around $s/D=1.0$ for the considered inflows.

Assessing the Effect of Coriolis Acceleration on the Coherent Structures in the Wake of a Wind Turbine using DMD

Abstract The present work aims to study the effect of veer, namely, the height-dependent lateral deflection of wind velocity due to Coriolis acceleration, on the coherent structures in the wake of the NREL 5-MW reference wind turbine using the sparsity-promoting dynamic mode decomposition (SP-DMD) method for the detection of dynamically-relevant flow structures. Large eddy simulation of the flow impacting the wind turbine is carried out by solving the filtered Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flows. The effects of both tower and nacelle are included in the simulation using the immersed boundary method. Simulations are performed at Re ≈ 108, generating the inlet velocity profile by a precursor simulation of the atmospheric boundary layer subjected to Coriolis acceleration. The analysis of the DMD results allows to study the effects of the Coriolis acceleration on the most relevant dynamic modes in the turbine wake and to understand the basic mechanisms by which the wind veer significantly affects the wake recovery rate. Moreover, as a result of the SP-DMD methodology, the most relevant modes are extracted from the wake and a limited subset of relevant flow features that optimally approximates the original data sequence is identified. This small number of modes represent the kernel that can be employed for developing an accurate reduced order model of the wake.

Numerical investigation of noise reduction of a pump-jet propulsor using porous metal

A novel strategy for noise reduction in pump-jet propulsor (PJP) is proposed through the design of porous metal trailing edges on stator blades. The interference between stator wake vortices and rotor blades is one of the primary mechanisms for noise generation in PJP. The goal is to use a porous medium to diminish the intensity of turbulent vortices behind the stator blades, control the interaction between these shedding vortices and the rotor blades downstream of the stator, and ultimately suppress the rotor noise generation source. Large eddy simulation and acoustic analogy analysis of the entire propulsion system based on the Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings equation are performed. It is found that with the use of porous stator trailing edges, the wake flow pattern of the stator is notably altered, the strong impact of the turbulent vortices on the rotor blades is weakened, and the wall pressure fluctuations on the rotor blades and duct are significantly reduced. As a result, the far-field radiation noise and tonal noise are both effectively reduced, with the maximum reduction in total and tonal sound pressure levels reaching 3.8 dB and 12.53 dB, respectively, corresponding to percentage reductions of 6.0% and 21.69%. These findings demonstrate that porous media have great potential for practical engineering applications in PJP noise control.

Internal gravity waves in flow past a bluff body under different levels of stratification

The flow field of a bluff body, a circular disk, that moves horizontally in a stratified environment is studied using large-eddy simulations. Five levels of stratification (body Froude numbers of ${{Fr}} = 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2$ and $5$ ) are simulated at Reynolds number of ${{Re}} = 5000$ and Prandtl number of $Pr =1$ . A higher ${{Re}} = 50\,000$ database at ${{Fr}} = 2, 10$ and $Pr =1$ is also examined for comparison. The wavelengths and amplitudes of steady lee waves are compared with a linear-theory analysis. Excellent agreement is found over the entire range of ${{Fr}}$ if an ‘equivalent body’ that includes the separation region is employed for the linear theory. For asymptotically large distances, the velocity amplitude varies theoretically as ${{Fr}}^{-1}$ but a correction owing to the dependence of the separation zone on ${{Fr}}$ is needed. The wake waves propagate in a narrow band of angles with the vertical, and have a wavelength that increases with increasing ${{Fr}}$ . The envelope of wake waves, demarcated using buoyancy variance, exhibits self-similar behaviour. The higher ${{Re}}$ results are consistent with the buoyancy effects exhibited at the lower ${{Re}}$ . The wake wave energy is larger at ${{Re}} = 50\,000$ . Nevertheless, independent of ${{Fr}}$ and ${{Re}}$ , the ratio of the wake wave potential energy to the wake turbulent energy increases to approximately 0.6–0.7 in the non-equilibrium stage showing their energetic importance besides suggesting universality in this statistic. There is a crossover of energetic dominance of lee waves at ${{Fr}} <2$ to wake-wave dominance at ${{Fr}} \approx 5$ .

A momentum-conserving wake superposition method for wind-farm flows under pressure gradient

Pressure gradient over topography will significantly affect wind-farm flow. However, knowledge gaps still exist on how to superpose wind-turbine wakes in the wind-farm flow analytical model to account for this effect, leading to systematic errors in evaluating wind-farm wake effects. To this end, we derive an implicit momentum-conserving wake superposition method under pressure gradient (PG-IMCM) based on the total momentum deficit equation, which is linearised by the convection velocity introduced by Zong & Porté-Agel (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 889, 2020, A8). The PG-IMCM method consists of the linear-weighted sum of individual velocity deficits, the sum of the individual pressure correction terms and the total pressure correction term. Based on a sensitivity analysis, we demonstrate that the last two terms nearly cancel out and, thus, can be neglected, resulting in a simplified form, which has the same form as its counterpart under zero pressure gradient but with the single-wake quantities redefined based on the wake model under pressure gradient. This motivates us to further examine the performance of the combination of five empirical superposition methods and the stand-alone wake model under pressure gradient. Validation results based on large-eddy simulation show that PG-IMCM has an overall satisfactory performance in both the magnitude and shape of the velocity-deficit profiles, provided that the stand-alone turbine wake can be modelled accurately, which is virtually identical with its simplified form. Further comparison with empirical superposition methods shows that local linear and wind product superposition methods based on the updated base flow also have comparable performance, with only discernable differences with the PG-IMCM method in the near-wake region of downstream turbines. Therefore, they are two attractive methods for engineering applications.

Large eddy simulation of the combined effect of heat fluxes and wave forcing of summer monsoon on a diurnal ocean mixed layer in the north Arabian Sea

Large eddy simulation of the combined effect of heat fluxes and wave forcing of summer monsoon on a diurnal ocean mixed layer in the north Arabian Sea

A meso–micro atmospheric perturbation model for wind farm blockage

As wind farms continue to grow in size, mesoscale effects such as blockage and gravity waves become increasingly important. Allaerts & Meyers (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 862, 2019, pp. 990–1028) proposed an atmospheric perturbation model (APM) that can simulate the interaction of wind farms and the atmospheric boundary layer while keeping computational costs low. The model resolves the mesoscale flow, and couples to a wake model to estimate the turbine inflow velocities at the microscale. This study presents a new way of coupling the mesoscale APM to a wake model, based on matching the velocity between the models throughout the farm. This method performs well, but requires good estimates of the turbine-level velocity fields by the wake model. Additionally, we investigate the mesoscale effects of a large wind farm, and find that aside from the turbine forces and increased turbulence levels, the dispersive stresses due to subgrid flow heterogeneity also play an important role at the entrance of the farm, and contribute to the global blockage effect. By using the wake model coupling, we can explicitly incorporate these stresses in the model. The resulting APM is validated using 27 prior large-eddy simulations of a large wind farm under different atmospheric conditions. The APM and large-eddy simulation results are compared on both mesoscale and turbine scale, and on turbine power output. The APM captures the overall effects that gravity waves have on wind farm power production, and significantly outperforms standard wake models.

The structure and dynamics of the laminar separation bubble

A novel selective mode decomposition, proper orthogonal decomposition and dynamic mode decomposition methods are used to analyse large-eddy simulation data of the flow field about a NACA0012 airfoil at low Reynolds numbers of $5\times 10^4$ and $9\times 10^4$ , and at near-stall conditions. The objective of the analysis is to investigate the structure of the laminar separation bubble (LSB) and its associated low-frequency flow oscillation (LFO). It is shown that the flow field can be decomposed into three dominant flow modes: two low-frequency modes (LFO-Mode-1 and LFO-Mode-2) that govern an interplay of a triad of vortices and sustain the LFO phenomenon, and a high-frequency oscillating (HFO) mode featuring travelling Kelvin–Helmholtz waves along the wake of the airfoil. The structure and dynamics of the LSB depend on the energy content of these three dominant flow modes. At angles of attack lower than the stall angle of attack and above the angle of a full stall, the flow is dominated by the HFO mode. At angles of attack above the stall angle of attack the LFO-Mode-2 overtakes the HFO mode, triggers instability in the LSB and initiates the LFO phenomenon. Previous studies peg the structure, stability and bursting conditions of the separation bubble to local flow parameters. However, the amplitude of these local flow parameters is dependent on the energy content of the three dominant flow modes. Thus, the present work proposes a more robust bursting criterion that is based on global eigenmodes.

Large Eddy Simulation of large-scale hydrogen deflagrations using the Thickened Flame Model with stretch sensitivity adaptation and thermo-diffusive instability modeling

Due to the high costs associated to experimental testing of hydrogen (H2) explosions, numerical simulations play an essential role in the design of safe industrial systems. In this work, we investigate the use of the Thickened Flame Model (TFM) to perform simulations of H2 deflagrations. Specific issues arise when considering hydrogen: (i) due to differential diffusion, the flame is very sensitive to stretch; (ii) instabilities of the flame front are generated and lead to an increased flame propagation speed. Both of these phenomena are affected by flame thickening. First, the flame sensitivity to stretch is artificially increased by the thickening. The recently developed Ma-TFM model proposes a correction of diffusive fluxes to reach the correct Markstein length and is selected in this work. Secondly, thermo-diffusive and hydrodynamic flame instabilities are also altered by thickening. By computing the dispersion relationship for a hydrogen/air mixture, we show that the instability scales are proportional to the thickening factor F. A simple subgrid scale (SGS) model, based on the computations of laminar unstable 2-D and 3-D flames, is then considered to take into account the effect of instabilities. The Ma-TFM and SGS instability models are applied together for the first time on a semi-industrial vented lean hydrogen deflagration, leading to promising results. In particular, it is found that considering 3-D unstable flames is necessary to accurately predict the experimental pressure peaks.

Experimental and numerical investigation on the cavitation erosion effect and resonance effect of submerged water jets

ABSTRACT To analyse the cavitation erosion effect and resonance effect of submerged water jets generated by organ-pipe nozzles, experimental and numerical research is conducted in the nozzles with five different diffuser angles. The cavitation erosion intensity and the flow characteristics of submerged jets are obtained by the erosion test, high-speed photography and Large Eddy Simulation. The experimental and numerical results illustrate that the nozzle with a 60° diffuser angle is capable of producing a strong cavitation erosion effect. Compared to the fully developed submerged jet, the axial pressure oscillation of axially confined submerged jets is stronger, indicating that it has a strong resonance effect. The stress wave generated by cavitation modulates the jets after reflection from the impact wall. This modulation results in the excitation of the original main frequency oscillation of organ-pipe nozzle jets, which then gives rise to multiple frequency oscillations, thereby forming the strong resonance effect.

Analysis of aeroacoustic characteristics of a supersonic jet at designed conditions based on numerical simulation

The work is devoted to the numerical simulation of aeroacoustic characteristics of a supersonic jet issuing from a Laval nozzle at the design Mach number M=2. The results of the large-eddy simulations (LES) are presented. Characteristics of mean jet flow and its fluctuations, as well as the characteristics of the far-field jet noise, including its azimuthal content, are obtained. The results of the simulation are compared with experimental data and their acceptable agreement is shown. It is concluded that there are various noise generation mechanisms in the considered jet.

An efficient dimensionality reduction approach for modelling cryogenic hydrogen release

This study develops a precise and cost-effective method for reducing the complexity of cryogenic hydrogen unintended release. For this purpose, the dominant modes of a well-characterised cryogenic hydrogen jet (Sandia National Laboratories), with stagnation pressure and temperature fixed at 5 bar and 50 K, are extracted using the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) method. Building on validating the large eddy simulation (LES) against experimental measurements, the velocity field within the LES results is analysed near the release point. The mass fraction half-width of cryogenic hydrogen jets grows linearly with a slope of 0.1115 against the downstream distances, resembling room-temperature jets. The first 10 extracted modes from 500 LES snapshots demonstrate dominance over the remaining modes. In addition, this study evaluates the flammable gas dispersion using LES and 10-mode POD, showing POD effectively identifies high-risk areas within hydrogen's flammability range. Minor deviations (2.1–3.3%) confirm POD's reliability for hazard assessment compared with LES. Furthermore, an in-depth analysis is performed on the radial distributions of hydrogen mass fraction and centreline hydrogen mole fraction.

Standardized Daily High‐Resolution Large‐Eddy Simulations of the Arctic Boundary Layer and Clouds During the Complete MOSAiC Drift

AbstractThis study utilizes the wealth of observational data collected during the recent Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) drift experiment to constrain and evaluate close to two‐hundred daily Large‐Eddy Simulations (LES) of Arctic boundary layers and clouds at high resolutions. A standardized approach is adopted to tightly integrate field measurements into the experimental configuration. Covering the full drift represents a step forward from single‐case LES studies, and allows for a robust assessment of model performance against independent data under a range of atmospheric conditions. A homogeneously forced domain is simulated in a Lagrangian frame of reference, initialized with radiosonde and value‐added cloud profiles. Prescribed boundary conditions include various measured surface characteristics. Time‐constant composite forcing is applied, primarily consisting of subsidence rates sampled from reanalysis data. The simulations run for 3 hours, allowing turbulence and clouds to spin up while still facilitating direct comparison to MOSAiC data. Key aspects such as the vertical thermodynamic structure, cloud properties, and surface energy fluxes are well reproduced and maintained. The model captures the bimodal distribution of atmospheric states that is typical of Arctic climate. Selected days are investigated more closely to assess the model's skill in maintaining the observed boundary layer structure. The sensitivity to various aspects of the experimental configuration and model physics is tested. The model input and output are available to the scientific community, supplementing the MOSAiC data archive. The close agreement with observed meteorology justifies the use of LES for gaining further insight into Arctic boundary layer processes and their role in Arctic climate change.

Insight into the impact of fixed transition on the aerodynamic performance and noise of airfoils with varying airfoil thicknesses

To explore the effect of surface pollution on the aerodynamics and acoustics of airfoils, the aerodynamic performance and noise of Delft University of Technology (DU) airfoils with different relative thicknesses are simulated using the shear-stress transport k-ω model and large Eddy simulation. The sensitive positions of fixed transition for DU airfoils are examined in terms of aerodynamic performance and noise, and the variations in aerodynamic performance, noise, and internal flow are analyzed. The results show that the sensitive position of fixed transition is almost unaffected by the relative thickness of airfoils. In terms of aerodynamic performance and noise, the sensitive transition positions on the suction surface are located at 1%c and 5%c, respectively. Fixed transition leads to a reduction in the aerodynamic efficiency and an elevation in noise. The impact of fixed transition on the airfoil's trailing-edge noise far exceeds its effect on radiated noise. The original airfoil's noise exhibits a typical dipole-like directional distribution. However, after the fixed transition, the dipole distribution gradually blurs, and this trend becomes more pronounced with increasing relative thickness. Fixed transition reduces the stability of wake vortex shedding and increases the energy loss, and an increase in relative thickness enlarges the high vortex region and vortex size near the fixed transition.