Journal of Shanghai University (English Edition), 2007, 11(1): 1721

Digital Object Identier(DOI): 10.1007/s 11741-007-0102-5

Letter

Numerical study of the turbulent flow around a circular pier

ZHAO Wei ( ), HUHE Ao-de ()
Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, P. R. China
Abstract In practical problems, the variation of the free surface around a circular pier is severe. For the Fluent CFD, the
multiphase ow models cannot be used together with the LES model to calculate the free surface. Present paper provides a
two-step method which joints the 2D compressible ideal-gas equations and the LES model to calculate the 3D ow eld with
free surface around the pier. The eects of the free surface on the ow structures are studied in detail.
Keywords large eddy simulation, free surface, Fluent CFD, ow structures, two-step method.
2000 Mathematics Subject Classification 76D17, 76D25

1 Introduction
The turbulent ow eld around a circular pier is
a complex three-dimensional unsteady ow including
a ow separation, the formation of the horseshoe vortex, the wake vortex shedding and its interaction with
the horseshoe vortex. The numerical studies on this
ow eld are carried out mostly based on the Reynoldsaveraged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with statistical turbulence models[15] . In [6], the calculations of the
ow past a square cylinder for at bed with LES model
and RANS equations were compared with the experimental measurements. It is shown that in all RANS
calculations with various versions of statistical turbulence models the turbulent uctuations were strongly
underpredicted. The LES approach gave a better result.
We simulated the ow eld around a circular cylinder
for at bed by the LES model and the RANS equations
with standard k turbulence model. In Fig.1 the simulation results of the mean turbulent kinetic energy are
compared with the experimental measurement[7] . It can
be seen that the results of the LES model are in good
agreement with the measurement, and the RANS equation result is severely low. Meanwhile in most of the
previous numerical investigations, the water surface is
assumed to be the at surface. Salaheldin, et al.[4] calculated the variation of the free surface with the multiphase ow model.
In this paper, the Fluent CFD software is applied
to calculate the three-dimensional (3D) ow eld with
free surface. Because the LES approach cannot be used
together with the multiphase ow models, a two-step
method is introduced to calculate the free surface and
the ow eld around the pier.
Received Sep.13, 2006
Corresponding author ZHAO Wei, PhD, E-mail: hsei@sohu.com

Fig.1

Comparison of the mean turbulent kinetic energy

calculated with the LES approach and the RANS
equations at Re=7040

2 Mathematical model
The mathematical model contains two steps, the rst
one is to calculate the variation of the free surface with
the two-dimensional (2D) ideal-gas compressible equations which are analogous to the shallow-water equations; the second step is to simulate the 3D ow eld.
The 2D simulation provides pressure boundary for the
top at surface in the 3D simulation. The two steps

Journal of Shanghai University

18

can be jointed with the user-dened function (UDF) of

uent. The UDF can complete the transient transfer of
the water surface data between the calculation of the
2D free surface and the 3D ow eld.

2.1

2D free surface calculation equations

To integrate the three dimensional Navier-Stokes

equations along ow depth, we can obtain the following shallow water equations:
H
+ (HU ) = 0,
t
U
+ (U )U = g + 2 U ,
t

(1)
(2)

where H is the ow depth with H = h + (see Fig.2).

Let density = H( is density of water), pressure
P = g 2 /(2), then (1) and (2) can be written in the
following forms:

+ (
U ) = 0,
t
(
U )
+ (
U )U = P + gh + 2 U .
t

(3)
(4)

Thus the shallow-water equations can be analogous to

the 2D ideal-gas compressible equations of = 2 ( is
specic heat ratio). The gas density is corresponding to
the ow depth.

Fig.2

2.2

Coordinate of the bed form and the water surface

3D flow governing equations

In LES approach, the spatially-ltered 3D NavierStokes equations can be written as

u
i
= 0,
(5)
xi



ij
u
i
p
(
ui ) +
(
ui u
j ) =

t
xj
xj
xj
xi
xj
(6)
where and is density and viscosity coecient respectively. ij is the subgrid-scale stress,
ui u
j .
ij = ui uj

(7)

The eect of the unresolved small-scale motion is

simulated with the subgrid-scale model. In the present

simulations, the Smagorinsky-Lilly eddy viscosity model

has been applied as
1
ij kk ij = 2t Sij ,
3 
t = L2s 2Sij Sij ,

(8)
(9)

i
1 u
u
j
Sij = (
+
),
2 xj
xi

(10)

Ls = min(d, Cs V 1/3 ),

(11)

where t is the subgrid-scale turbulent viscosity, =

0.42, Cs = 0.1, d is the distance to the closest wall, and
V is the volume of the computational cell.
The governing equations are discretized using
a second-order accurate, cell-centered nite-volume
method with upwinding scheme. A second-order implicit scheme is used for all time dependent terms, which
is unconditionally stable with respect to time step size.
The pressure-velocity coupling scheme of the pressureimplicit with splitting of operators (PISO) is used which
can dramatically decrease the number of iterations required for convergence.

2.3

Calculation domain and boundary conditions

The calculation domain is 30D 12D 3D. In order

to investigate the ow eld near bed in detail, the unstructured grids are used and the near-wall mesh spacing
is Z + < 5. The total grid number is 1390820.
In the 2D simulation, at the inlet (X=10D) and the
outlet (X=20D) boundary the pressure-far-eld conditions are applied and the pressure (p = gH 2 /2), temperature (T
= p/(R) = gH/(2R)) and Mach number
(M = U/ gH) are specied; the symmetry boundary
is applied at the two sides (Y = 6D).
For the 3D simulation, at the inlet boundary the
transverse velocity is set to zero and the longitudinal velocity is composed with mean and uctuating velocity;
a vanishing gradient of velocity is applied at the outlet
boundary; on the top at surface, a pressure boundary
condition is prescribed which is obtained from the 2D
simulation (p = gH); symmetry boundaries are used at
two sides; at the bed and the cylinder surface, a non-slip
and no-penetration boundary conditions are specied.

3 Results and discussion

The change of the water level around a circular pier is
closely related to the approaching velocity. Fig.3 shows
the shape of the free surface around the pier at Re=7040
(the approaching velocity U =0.22 m/s) and Re=12800
(U =0.4 m/s). It can be seen that the water level increases gradually in the area ahead of the pier until it
reaches the maximum at the stagnation point of the upstream face. At the two sides of the pier the water level

Vol. 11

No. 1

Feb. 2007

ZHAO W, et al. : Numerical study of the turbulent ow around a circular pier

decreases rapidly. In the wake region, the water level

increases away from the pier until it reaches the ow
depth not inuenced by the presence of the pier. As
the approaching velocity increases, the variation of the
water level around the pier is large.
The mean vorticities at the water surface and the
bed bottom are shown in Fig.4. At the water surface,
the maximum vorticity, the aected region of the high
vorticity and the aected degree of the free surface increase as the approaching velocity increases (Fig.4(a)
and Fig.4(b)). At Re=7040, the eect of the free surface on the vorticity of the bed bottom is lower for the
present ow depth (Fig.4(c)). But at Re=12800, the free
surface has obvious eect on the bed bottom vorticity

Fig.4

19

all around the pier (Fig.4(d)).

Fig.3

Contours of the water level around the pier (averaging ow depth Z = 3D)

Comparison of the mean vorticities at the water surface and the bed bottom

The calculation results of the turbulent kinetic energy are shown in Fig.5. At Re=7040, the eect of the
free surface is small and restricted in the region near
the water surface. As the incoming velocity increases,
the range of the high turbulent kinetic energy expands
(Fig.5(a) and Fig.5(b)).
Fig.6 shows the mean bed shear stress. For Re=7040,
the inuence of the free surface variation on the bed
shear stress is low. In the wake of the pier, the position
of the higher bed shear stress moves downstream slightly
for the free surface (Fig.6(a)). While at Re=12800, the

bed shear stress for the free surface increases more obviously than that for at surface at the side of the pier.
The mean pressure coecient (Cp = (p p0 )/
(2U 2 )) in the symmetry plane of the pier is shown in
Fig.7. At Re=7040, the aection of the free surface is
restricted in the range of the water surface downstream
of the pier (Fig.7(a)). As the approaching velocity increases, the aected range is all around the pier and
the eect of the free surface variation on the pressure
increases in the near wake (Fig.7(b)).

Journal of Shanghai University

20

Fig.5

Comparison of the mean turbulent kinetic energy in the symmetry plane of the pier

Fig.6

Fig.7

Comparison of the mean bed shear stress

Comparison of the mean pressure coecient in the symmetry plane of the pier

Vol. 11

No. 1

Feb. 2007

ZHAO W, et al. : Numerical study of the turbulent ow around a circular pier

4 Conclusions
In practical problems, the variation of the free surface under the action of the wave or the current is severe.
In Fluent CFD, the multiphase ow models cannot be
used together with the LES model for the free surface
calculation. Present paper provides a two-step calculation method, which is simple and ecient to solve the
3D ow eld with free surface by the LES.
The results show that for the shallow water, at the
incoming velocity U =0.22 m/s, the inuence of the free
surface is small. As the approaching velocity increases,
the free surface variation has more eects on the ow
structures, for example the vorticity, the turbulent intensity, the bed shear stresses and the pressure eld.

References

21

merical ow modeling for estimation of maximum local

scour depth[J]. Journal of Hydraulic Research, 1998,
36(4): 579589.
[3] Kamil H M, Ali K O. Simulation of ow around piers[J],
Journal of Hydraulic Research, 2002, 40(2): 161174.
[4] Salaheldin T M, Imran J, Chaudhry M H. Numerical
modeling of three-dimensional ow eld around circular piers[J]. ASCE Journal of Hydraulic Engineering,
2004, 130(2): 91100.
[5] Xue Lei-ping, Liu Hua, Liu Hai-jiang. Threedimensional numerical model for turbulent ow around
a bottom-mounded pile[J]. Acta Mechanica Sinica,
2004, 36(6): 649654 (in Chinese).
[6] Rodi W. Comparison of LES and RANS calculations of
the ow around blu bodies[J]. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 1997, 69-71:
5575.

[1] Olsen N R B, Melaaen M C. Three-dimensional calculation of scour around cylinders[J]. ASCE Journal of
Hydraulic Engineering, 1993, 119(9): 10481504.

[7] Zhao Wei, Huhe Ao-de. Experimental investigation of

scour mechanism around a circular cylinder[J]. Acta
Mechanica Sinica, 2006, 38(5): 577585 (in Chinese).

[2] Olsen N R B, Kjellesvig H M. Three-dimensional nu-

(Editor WANG Hai-jiang )