S UBGRID - SCALE MODELING OF SCALARS FOR LARGE

EDDY SIMULATIONS OF TRANSITIONAL FLOWS

C. Brun1,2 , G. Balarac1,∗, C. B. da Silva3 , M. Petrovan Boiarciuc2 and O. Métais1

1
Equipe MoST / LEGI, BP. 53, 38041, Grenoble Cedex 09, France
2
Institut PRISME / LME, 8 rue Léonard de Vinci, 45072 Orléans Cedex 2, France
3
Instituto Superior Técnico, LASEF, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
∗
present adress: CTR, Stanford University, CA 94301, USA

Abstract Damped Quasi-Normal Markovian (EDQNM) theory

The spectral eddy-viscosity and eddy-diffusivity and the Structure Function model (SF), based on a lo-
closures derived from the EDQNM theory, and one of cal second-order velocity structure function (Métais
its physical space counterparts i.e. the Structure Func- and Lesieur, 1992) are revisited to account for such
tion model (Métais and Lesieur 1992), were revisited properties. Molecular viscosity and diffusivity effects
to account for molecular viscosity and diffusivity ef- which have been neglected in the original model, are
fects (Brun et al., Phys Fluids 2008). The subgrid- included in a new model formulation for νT and κT
scale Schmidt number (usually set to ScT ≈ 0.6) valid for transitional flows. The new model provides
is analytically derived from the EDQNM theory and damping effects and constitutes a viscous extension of
shown to be Reynolds number dependent. LES of the basic Structure Function model (VSF) written in
round incompressible jet at Re = 25, 000, Sc = 0.2 the physical space. Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of
and LES of plane compressible channel flow at Re = an incompressible turbulent round jet and a compress-
4, 880, P r = 0.7 are carried out and show the im- ible channel flow are performed with the present SGS
portant role of the present Viscous Structure Func- model.
tion (VSF) model in flows involving scalar transport at
moderate Reynolds numbers or during the transition to 2 SGS modeling in spectral space
turbulence. In spectral space, the kinetic energy transfer across
the cutoff wave number kc for the velocity and the
scalar field write respectively
1 Introduction
The LES technique consists of computing the T>kc = −2νT k 2 E(k) (1)
large-scale motions, which are defined by a spatial
filtering operation, while the subgrid-scales are not and
φ
computed and their effect needs to be modeled. It T>kc = −2κT k 2 E(k) (2)
is now largely used to solve incompressible hydro- with E(k) the kinetic energy density spectrum. The
dynamic and aerodynamic problems and many SGS spectral eddy viscosity νT and the spectral eddy dif-
models have been designed to close the resulting fil- fusivity κT are derived following Métais and Lesieur
tered Navier-Stokes equations (Lesieur and Métais, (1992) as
1996; Meneveau and Katz, 2000). Conversely, LES Z ∞  
techniques applied to turbulent combustion, turbulent 1 ∂E
νT = θ0pp 5E(p) + p dp (3)
mixing or compressible flow are relatively new. In 15 kc ∂p
these cases, the filtered transport equation of a scalar Z
2 ∞
(e.g. mixture fraction, temperature) must be solved κT = φ0pp E(p)dp (4)
and a subgrid scalar flux has to be modeled. Usu- 3 kc
ally, the SGS modeling of a scalar in turbulent flows with θkpq and φkpq the velocity and scalar-velocity
is based on an eddy diffusivity hypothesis κT = triple correlation relaxation times, respectively. They
νT /ScT , where the eddy viscosity νT is obtained by are given by the EDQNM theory as
a given SGS model, and the turbulent Schmidt num-
ber ScT is taken to be constant, ScT ≈ 0.6 (Lesieur 1
θkpq =
and Rogallo, 1989). Moin et al. (1991) developed µ1 (k) + µ1 (p) + µ1 (q) + ν(k 2 + p2 + q 2 )
a dynamic procedure to compute the eddy diffusivity (5)
κT and they showed that κT depends on the molecu- and
lar Schmidt number Sc and the local turbulent state 1
φkpq = ,
of the flow. In the present work, the spectral eddy µ2 (k) + µ2 (p) + µ3 (q) + κ(k 2 + p2 ) + νq 2 )
viscosity and eddy diffusivity model based on Eddy- (6)
 Rk
where µi (k) = a2i 0 p2 E(p)dp, ν is the molecular scalar transport equation involve unclosed terms which
viscosity, λ is the molecular diffusivity, and ai are require modeling,
constants. Assuming a kinetic energy spectrum as
E(k) ∝ k −m , the eddy viscosity and the eddy dif- ∂ ūi
= 0 (13)
fusivity in spectral space are ∂xi
 
  ∂ ūi ∂ ūi ∂ p̄ ∂ 2S̄ij
ln(1 + X) + u¯j = − + − τij (14)
i
νT = νT (m) 1 − (7) ∂t ∂xj ∂xi ∂xj Re
X  
∂ T̄ ∂ T̄ ∂ 1 ∂ T̄
+ u¯j = − qj (15)
and   ∂t ∂xj ∂xj ReP r ∂xj
ln(1 + QX)
κT = κiT (m) 1 − (8) The subgrid-scale stresses tensor, τij = ui uj − ūi ūj ,
QX
is modeled using an eddy viscosity concept,
with νTi (m) and κiT (m) the ‘inviscid’ eddy viscosity
and the ‘inviscid’ eddy diffusivity basically obtain by 1
τij − δij τkk = −2νT S̄ij ,
neglecting the molecular viscosity and molecular dif- 3
fusivity terms in θkpq and φkpq , as previously written
by Métais and Lesieur (1992). The damping functions where S̄ij is the filtered strain rate tensor. In the
(1 − ln(1 + X)/X) and (1 − ln(1 + QX)/QX) are scalar transport equation, the subgrid-scale scalar flux
defined with is modeled using an eddy diffusivity concept,

15a21 m + 1 νTi (m) ∂ T̄

X= (9) qi = ui T − ūi T̄ = −κT .
5−m3−m ν ∂xi
and The extension to physical space of the damping
Sc procedure developed in Fourier space results in a Vis-
Q= 12SciT (5/3) . (10)
1 + Sc cous Structure Function model (VSF) (Brun et al.,
where Phys Fluids 2008) where eddy viscosity and eddy dif-
fusivity are given by,
νTi (m) (5 − m) (a2 + a3 )
SciT (m) = = (11)  
κiT (m) (20a1 ) V SF SF ln(1 + x)
νT = νT 1− (16)
x
is the ‘inviscid’ turbulent Schmidt number (Métais and
Lesieur, 1992). Eqs.(7) and (8) define the new model and
extension in spectral space. A priori tests performed  
on DNS of homogeneous isotropic turbulence shows νTSF ln(1 + Qx)
κVT SF = i
1− , (17)
indeed that the spectral eddy viscosity and diffusiv- ScT (5/3) Qx
ity can be strongly decreased by the damping function
in comparison with the ‘inviscid’ values (see Brun et with νTSF the eddy viscosity predicted by the Struc-
al., Phys Fluids 2008 for details). The damping is a ture function model (Métais and Lesieur, 1992). In
function of the molecular Schmidt number and the lo- physical space, the angle α between the local vorticity
cal turbulence intensity in agreement with previous ob- ~ω and the mean vorticity ~ωM , averaged on a shell of
servations. In the limit of small X, the SGS Schmidt radius the filter size, provides a measure of the local
number writes turbulence of the flow (Lesieur and Métais, 1996). In
  a similar way as in Sagaut (2000), the parameter x is
(m) (5 − m) 1 set to
ScT = 1+ (12)  α  ν SF
40 Sc T
x = tan (18)
2 ν
instead of its inviscid counterpart SciT (m), which with  
shows the double adjustment with respect to both the ω
~ .~
ωM
slope of the energy spectrum and the molecular diffu- α = arccos (19)
|~ω||~ωM |
sion damping effects which is expected to be of crit-
ical importance for flows involving scalar transport. which finally yields a continuous extension of the so
For example, for m = 5/3 we get SciT = 0.6 and called Selective Structure Function model (SSF - see
ScT = 0.2, and for m = 3 we get SciT = 0.36 and Lesieur and Métais, 1996).
ScT = 0.12, that is to say a reduction of the SGS A priori tests were performed on a DNS of plane
Schmidt number of about one third. jet (Brun et al., Phys Fluids 2008) using a top-hat fil-
ter. Figure 1 (a) and (b) show that eddy viscosity
and diffusivity (extracted from explicit filtering) fol-
3 SGS modeling in physical space low the expected ∆4/3 scaling rule. Figures 2 (a) and
In LES carried in the physical space, the filtered (b) compare the eddy viscosity and diffusivity given by
Navier-Stokes equations and a corresponding filtered Eqs. (16) and (17) to a reference explicitly computed
 ∆/∆x=3 ∆/∆x=7
(a) (d)

SF

(b) (e)

VSF

(c) (f)

REF

(a) (a)
∆/∆x=3 ∆/∆x=7
(a) (d)

SF

(b) (e)

VSF

(c) (f)

REF
(b)

Figure 1: Scaling law of the (a) eddy-viscosity νT , (b) (b)

eddy-diffusivity κT as a function of the filter size ∆
in a-priori tests on a plane jet for ReH = 3, 000 and
Sc = 0.7. The reference values (REF) which were ob-
tained by box filtering the DNS, are compared with the
classical Structure Function model (SF), and Viscous
Structure Function model (VSF).
Figure 2: Isovalues of the (a) eddy-viscosity νT , (b)
eddy-diffusivity κT in a-priori tests on a plane jet for
ReH = 3, 000 and Sc = 0.7. The reference values
(REF) which were obtained by box filtering the DNS,
are compared with the classical Structure Function
model (SF), and Viscous Structure Function model
(VSF).
 0.8
ScT VSF
agreement was obtained also for the root-mean square
REF
SF
(RMS) of the velocity and passive scalar fields with re-
0.6
spect to experimental results (Crow and Champagne,
1971; Mi et al., 2001) including a linear decay be-
haviour in the fully turbulent region. The transition to
0.4 turbulence starts about 1D earlier for both the velocity
and the scalar fields due to the inhibition of the SGS
model caused by the damping functions. The scalar
0.2 RMS reaches a lower (about 10%) saturation value
with the VSF model than with the FSF model, an ef-
fect which is related to the variation in SGS Schmidt
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 number in the transition zone. In the experiments (Mi
z/H et al., 2001), the transition to turbulence is strongly
(a)
enhanced when the flow is issued from a smooth con-
traction and yields TRMTo
S
≈ 3% at about z = 2D. A
Figure 3: Downstream evolution, at y/H = 0.5 of clear improvement with a similar trend was obtained
SGS Schmidt number ScT in a-priori tests on a plane when the VSF model is used.
jet for ReH = 3, 000 and Sc = 0.7. The refer-
ence values (REF) which were obtained by box filter-
ing the DNS, are compared with the classical Structure 5 LES of compressible channel flow
Function model (SF), and Viscous Structure Function We now turn to compressible flow applications for
model (VSF). which the temperature is no longer a passive scalar.
Nevertheless, a similar closure for LES of compress-
ible flow can be derived. In the context of compress-
from the filtered DNS data. The damping effect clearly ible flows, using the the Favre decomposition ρ̄eb = ρb,
improves the behavior of the eddy viscosity and diffu- the LES equations read, in density-weighted conserva-
sivity with respect to the basic SF model. Indeed, the tion form (Lesieur et al. 2005)
present model allows to decrease the mean gradient in-
fluence during the transition stage of the flow. In par- ∂ ρ̄ ∂(ρ̄ũi )
+ =0 (20)
ticular, the strong diffusive behavior of the SF model ∂t ∂xi
along the shear layer center is inhibited by the damp-
ing effect. This leads to the expected behavior for  
the turbulent Schmidt number in comparison with the ∂(ρ̄ũi ) ∂ 1
+ ρ̄ũi ũj + p̄δij S̃ij (21)
classical assumption of a constant turbulent Schmidt ∂t ∂xj γM 2
  
number (Fig. 3). µ̃
− + ρ̄νT S̃ij = f δi1
Re
4 LES of incompressible round jet   
LES of spatially evolving incompressible turbulent ∂(ρ̄ẽ) ∂ µ̃
− γM 2 + ρ̄νT ũi S̃ij (22)
round jet were carried out with the new VSF model ∂t ∂xj Re
"   #
(Brun et al., Phys Fluids 2008) using an accurate ∂ γ µ̃ ∂ T̃
Navier-Stokes solver with pseudospectral methods and − + ρ̄κT
∂xj γ − 1 ReP r ∂xj
sixth order compact schemes (Balarac et al., 2007).
The Reynolds number was ReD = 25, 000 based on ∂
+ [(ρ̄ẽ + p̄)ũj ] = γM 2 W
the inflow velocity Uo of the jet and on the diameter D, ∂xj
and the molecular Schmidt number is Sc = 0.2. The
flow configuration consists of a co-flowing jet with with the total energy, the deformation tensor and the
about Uext /Uo = 7% coflow. Hyperbolic tangent pro- macro-pressure (Lesieur & Comte 2001) defined as,
files were applied as inflow conditions for both the ve- respectively
locity and the scalar (da Silva and Métais, 2002), with
p̄ γM 2
a momentum thickness θo = D/40. ρ̄ẽ = + ρ̄ũi 2 (23)
γ−1 2
Results were compared with the Filtered Struc-  
ture Function model (Lesieur and Métais, 1996) (FSF) 1 ∂ ũi ∂ ũj 2 ∂ ũk
S̃ij = + − δij (24)
with constant SGS Schmidt number ScT = 0.6. The 2 ∂xj ∂xi 3 ∂xk
mean velocity hUc i and mean scalar hTc i decay rates p̄ = ρ̄T̃ (25)
along the centreline z were in good agreement with
the experimental results (Hussein et al., 1994; Mi et The fluid is assumed to be an ideal gas (air) with
al., 2001) with β = 5.8 and K1 = 4.48 for the ve- constant ratio of specific heats γ = Cp /Cv = 1.4,
locity and passive scalar fields, respectively. A good R = Cp −Cv = 287JKg −1K −1 and constant Prandtl

0.6
hP rT i
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 50 100 150 200 250
+
z
(a)
Figure 4: mean SGS Prandtl number along the wall
normal direction of the channel flow for ReH = 4, 880
and P r = 0.7 with the new Viscous Structure Function
model (VSF).
number P r = 0.7. A power law µ̃ = µ(T̃ ) =
µw (T̃ /Tw )0.7 is considered for the molecular dynamic
viscosity.
We consider the configuration of a turbulent com-
pressible flow in a plane channel. The two source
terms f and W are set to drive the flow in the chan-
nel and yield a fully developed regime for both the
velocity and the temperature fields (see Brun et al.,
Theo. Comp. Fluid Dyn. 2008 for details). The
Reynolds number Re = 4, 880 and Mach number
M = 0.7 of the computations are defined based on
the macroscopic characteristics of the considered flow
case. Large Eddy Simulations are performed with an
eddy-viscosity and an eddy-diffusivity SGS model de-
rived from the present VSF model. The main change
with the case of passive scalar transport is that the flow
properties are spatially non homogeneous, which af-
fects the behaviour of the model (for example in the
core of the channel where the temperature is increas-
ing for increasing Mach number). The basic SF model
used in the derivation of the compressible VSF model
is defined based on the Favre filtered velocity field
(Ducros et al. 1996).
The effect of the damping function on the SGS
Prandtl number is clearly represented on fig. 3. Mean
values of P rT reach a maximum of about 0.3 in the
buffer layer, and a minimum value of 0.2 at the wall.
Instantaneous flow visualisations (not shown) predict
local maxima for P rT of 0.6 in the regions where Λ
vortices develop. Because of intermittency property
of the flow in the buffer layer zone, the mean value of
P rT is not larger than 0.3. Finally, in the core of the
channel, the increase in flow temperature (about 60%
larger in the center of the channel than the wall temper-
ature as described in Brun et al., Theo. Comp. Fluid
Dyn. 2008) yields a damping of P rT which reaches
a mean value of about 0.23. The present results are
similar to those obtained in both LES of isotropic tur-
bulence and LES of incompressible channel flow with
passive scalar by Moin et al. (1991) using a dynamic
SGS model for the scalar transport equation.
hU c+ i
20
15
300 10
5
0
0.1 1 10 100
z c+
(a)
hT c+ i
20
15
10
5
0
0.1 1 10 100
z c+
(b)
Figure 5: mean velocity and temperature profile along
the wall normal direction of a channel flow for ReH =
4, 880 and Sc = 0.7. Comparisons between Vis-
cous Structure Function model (VSF, solid line), Vis-
cous Structure Function model with constant ScT =
0.6 (VSF0, dotted line), Selective Structure Function
model (SSF, empty symbol), and Filetered Structure
Function model (FSF, filled symbol).
For comparisons we computed the same flow with
three SGS models derived from the SF model, the
present VSF model, the Selective SSF model and the
Filtered FSF model. The global dynamics of the flow
is not modified. The integral Reynolds number (Brun
et al., Theo. Comp. Fluid Dyn. 2008) is about Recτ =
250 for the VSF model while it is about Recτ = 265 for
the VSF model with ScT = 0.6 (VSF0), Recτ = 230
for the SSF model and Recτ = 280 for the FSF model.
Mean and RMS velocities (Figs 5 and 6) are weakly af-
fected while mean and RMS temperature are slightly
modified certainly due to turbulent diffusion mecha-
nisms. This shows the important role played by the
present model on large scale quantities predictions.
 and LES of plane turbulent compressible channel flow
3 at Re = 4, 880, P r = 0.7. The simulations show that
the damping in SGS Schmidt/Prandtl number is impor-
2.5 tant in regions were the flow is not fully turbulent and
affects the full behaviour of the flow in term of mean
2
uc+
rms and RMS velocity and scalar profiles. This appears to
1.5 be a major issue concerning the prediction of extrema
using LES of complex flows involving passive or ac-
1 tive scalars.
c+
wrms
c+
0.5 Acknowledgments
vrms
The computing resources were provided by IDRIS-
0
0 50 100 150 200 France. The authors gratefully acknowledge the finan-
z c+ cial support from the Centre National de la Recherche
(a) Scientifique (CNRS). The study was part of a DFG-
CNRS research project FR 507, untitled ’LES of com-
plex flows’.
3
hT c+ i References
2.5
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1
passive scalars Phys. Fluids.
C. Brun, M. Haberkorn, M. Boiarciuc Petrovan and
0.5
P. Comte (2008) Large Eddy Simulation of compressible
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z c+ Comp. Fluid Dyn..
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6 Conclusions
Phys.Fluids A.
The spectral eddy-viscosity and eddy-diffusivity M. Lesieur and P. Comte (2001) Favre filtering and
closures derived from the EDQNM theory have been macro-temperature in large-eddy simulations of com-
revisited in Brun et al. (Phys. Fluids 2008) to ac- pressible turbulence. C. R. Acad. Sci.
count for molecular diffusion effects which were ne- M. Lesieur, O. Métais, and P. Comte (2005) Large-Eddy
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Fluid Mech.
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