Numerical simulations of a fully developed turbulent channel flow by finite elements

D'ELÍA, JORGE; FRANCK, GERARDO; STORTI, MARIO; NIGRO, NORBERTO

Bariloche

Congreso; ENIEF 2004 (XIV Congreso sobre Métodos Numéricos y sus Aplicaciones).; 2004

División Mecánica Computacional, Centro Atómico Bariloche (CAB).

In this work numerical simulations by finite elements are performed for a fully developed turbulent and three-dimensional channel flow. This flow case represents a standard benchmark for validations in turbulent flow research. The computations are carried out by Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS).Structured grids are used for the channel geometry while the flow solver is the PETSc-FEM code. DNS is a time-dependent and three-dimensional numerical solution of the flow equations which are computed as accurately as possible without any turbulence model introduced. Homogeneous turbulence and wall turbulence are the most frequently cases considered in DNS literature. Some turbulence statistics such as friction coefficients, production and viscous dissipation rates, Taylor and Kolmogorov microscales are shown. We compare our results for the flow patterns both with those previously published and with the numerical ones.