Reynolds stress perturbation for epistemic uncertainty quantification of RANS models implemented in OpenFOAM

Abstract

Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) models are widely used for the simulation of engineering problems. The turbulent-viscosity hypothesis is a central assumption to achieve closures in this class of models. This assumption introduces structural or so-called epistemic uncertainty. Estimating that epistemic uncertainty is a promising approach towards improving the reliability of RANS simulations. In this study, we adopt a methodology to estimate the epistemic uncertainty by perturbing the Reynolds stress tensor. We focus on the perturbation of the turbulent kinetic energy and the eigenvalues separately. We first implement this methodology in the open source package OpenFOAM. Then, we apply this framework to the backward-facing step benchmark case and compare the results with the unperturbed RANS model, available direct numerical simulation data and available experimental data. It is shown that the perturbation of both parameters successfully estimate the region bounding the most accurate results.