Prediction of Turbulence and Transition in Turbomachinery Flows Using an Innovative Second Moment Closure Modeling

The paper reports on the assessment of two low-Reynolds-number second-moment turbulence closures (Low-Re SMC) in predicting turbulence and laminar-to-turbulent transition in turbomachinery flows. The model under consideration are the one by Hanjalic and Jakirlic (1998) (HJ) and an innovative topology-free Elliptic Blending Model, EBM, (Manceau and Hanjalic, 2002) here presented in a revised formulation. An in-house finite element code based on a parallel Multi-Grid technique for the solution phase (Borello et al., 2003a) is used. The finite element method is applied on mixed Q2-Q1 element shape functions formulation coupled with an innovative Petrov-Galerkin stabilization technique (Corsini et al., 2003). The test-cases under scrutiny are the transitional flow on a flat plate with circular leading edge (T3L ERCOFTAC-TSIG), and the flow around a DCA compressor cascade in quasi off-design condition (i = −1.5°) (Zierke and Deutch, 1989). The comparison between computations and experiments shows a satisfactory performance of the HJ model in predicting complex turbomachinery flows. The EBM also exhibits a fair level of accuracy, though it is less satisfactory in transition prediction. In view of its robustness, relative insensitivity to the grid refinement and the absence of topology-dependent parameters, the EBM is identified as an attractive second-moment closure option for computation of complex 3D turbulent flows in realistic turbomachinery configurations.© 2004 ASME