LES of Separated Flows at Moderate Reynolds Numbers

Appropriate for Turbine Blades and Unmanned Aero

Vehicles
J. A. Domaradzki, F. Cadieux, G. Castiglioni
Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-1191
M. Grilli, S. Hickel
Lehrstuhl f
ur Aerodynamik und Stromungsmechanik, Technische Universitat M
unchen
85748 Garching b. M
unchen
T. Sayadi, S. Bose
Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-3035
September 28, 2012

The description of the problem

Reynolds numbers for ows in rotating machinery, for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), micro air vehicles
(MAV), wind turbines, and propellers are usually low or moderate (based on wing/blade chord they
are typically less than 2 106 and often only on the order of few 104 105 ). Recent experimental
investigations of low Reynolds number aerodynamics [2, 7] reveal that such ows are often dominated by
the eects of ow separation that can greatly inuence lift and drag, and thus ight stability of UAVs,
eciency of wind turbines, and unsteadiness in turbine ows which is instrumental in predicting high cycle
fatigue (HCF) for turbomachinery components. In order to produce ecient designs or control schemes to
reduce separation eects numerical prediction tools for such ows are needed. However, reliable numerical
results for such ows are dicult to obtain unless DNS are used. This is because such ows provide a
challenging environment for turbulence models, consisting of a mixture of regions where the ow is laminar,
transitional, non-equilibrium turbulent boundary layer, and an equilibrium turbulent boundary layer. Our
work addresses the feasibility of LES for laminar separation bubble ows with the numerical resolution
significantly reduced compared with the DNS resolution, say to around 1% of DNS resolution, commonly
achievable for fully turbulent ows.

Flows considered

We have considered two benchmark ows: a boundary layer ow over a at plate and a ow over a
NACA-0012 airfoil at incidence.
For a at plate boundary layer a procedure used successfully by other investigators [8, 1, 6] to induce
separation was followed. The computational domain is a rectangular box with a rigid lower wall on which
the boundary layer ow evolves. A laminar Blasius boundary layer velocity prole with the free stream
velocity U0 is imposed at the inow. At the top boundary, a vertical suction velocity is imposed in a narrow
slot oriented perpendicular to the mean ow direction. The suction produces an adverse pressure gradient
that causes ow separation. The ow then transitions to turbulence and reattaches. The Reynolds number
at the location of the peak suction velocity is Rex = 105 . The full compressible Navier-Stokes equations
are solved for a perfect gas using sixth-order compact nite dierences [5] and an implicit-explicit time
integration scheme. The numerical scheme is constructed on a structured curvilinear grid, and the variables
are staggered in space. Both DNS and LES were performed.
For a ow around a wing/blade the specic geometrical setting is that of a 3D airfoil at incidence for
which detailed DNS results were obtained in [3]. The goal is to reproduce the laminar separation bubble
on a NACA-0012 airfoil at Rec = 5 104 at 5 deg of incidence. To simulate this case the code developed
at TUM has been employed. The code solves the compressible three-dimensional Navier-Stokes using a
conservative immersed boundary method for representing sharp interfaces between a uid and a rigid body
on Cartesian grids [4].

Preliminary results

For a at plate boundary layer the following simulations were performed: a DNS benchmark case (CTR
DNS), a wall-resolved LES with the dynamic Smagorinsky model (CTR LES), and a highly under-resolved
DNS (CTR UDNS). Parameters for these simulations are summarized in Table 1. In all cases simulations
were run until the separation bubble stabilized and turbulent ow was well established downstream of reattachment. Results were then averaged over multiple vortex shedding periods. The capability to predict
accurately at low computational cost the average skin friction, pressure coecient, and the location of separation and reattachment is of particular interest to airfoil and blade designers. For the case considered here
such a capability is demonstrated through results shown in in Figs. 1 and 2. Satisfactory qualitative and
quantitative agreement was achieved between the highly under-resolved DNS (CTR UDNS), wall-resolved
LES with the dynamic Smagorinsky model, and the fully-resolved DNS cases. However, the relatively good
1

Nx
Ny
Nz
Ntotal 106
% of CTR DNS
x+
y + at X = 7Y
z +

CTR DNS
1536
128
300
59.0
100
9.7
0.5
7.6

CTR LES
512
32
140
2.3
3.9
26.4
1.0
27.5

CTR UDNS
240
32
90
0.7
1.2
57.0
1.6
29.6

Table 1: Resolution and parameters for all cases run.

x 10

0.5
0.45

0.4

0.35
3

Cp

Cf

0.3
2
1

0.25
0.2

0.15
0.1

0.05

2
1

4
x

4
x

Figure 1: Wall coecient of friction. Symbols: CTR Figure 2: Coecient of pressure at the wall. SymDNS, line: CTR LES with dynamic Smagorinsky bols: CTR DNS, line: CTR LES with dynamic
model, dashed line: CTR UDNS.
Smagorinsky model, dashed line: CTR UDNS.

performance observed in the CTR UDNS no-model runs suggests that the numerical dissipation may play
a signicant role and this issue must be investigated further.
For the NACA-0012 airfoil at 5 deg of incidence only results from 2D simulations are currently available
(3D simulations are in progress). Two dimensional Cartesian grid has been generated through an adaptive
mesh renement procedure and two dierent resolutions were used, coarse with the total number of 64, 827
cells and ne with 128, 142 cells. For comparison, the baseline 2-D case of Jones et al. [3] used 1.6 106
grid points. The ow has been simulated for around 13 time units, c/U , where c is the airfoil cord and U
the free stream velocity. The instantaneous vorticity eld of the simulated ow is shown in Fig. 3. The
present 2-D simulations capture qualitatively features observed in high resolution DNS of Jones et al. [3],
including the presence of a separated ow. The quantitative assessment of the results is made by comparing
in Figs. 4 and 5 the friction and pressure coecients from our simulations with the corresponding data of
Jones et al. [3] for their high resolution 2-D DNS case. While the comparison for the pressure coecient is
reasonable the comparison for the friction coecient is poor overall. One important feature that appears
to be predicted relatively well is the location of the initial separation point, signied by the transition in
Cf from the positive to negative values on the suction side of the airfoil. However, the simulations do not
predict properly the secondary separation region at the mid-cord. We anticipate that 3D simulations at a
higher numerical resolution will allow to draw more authoritative conclusions concerning applicability of
LES to such separated ows.

Figure 3: The vorticity eld for a ow over an airfoil.

Figure 4: Coecient of friction

Figure 5: Coecient of pressure

References
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