Adjoint optimal control problems for the RANS system

Abstract

Adjoint optimal control in computational fluid dynamics has become increasingly popular recently because of its use in several engineering and research studies. However the optimal control of turbulent flows without the use of Direct Numerical Simulation is still an open problem and various methods have been proposed based on different approaches. In this work we study optimal control problems for a turbulent flow modeled with a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes system. The adjoint system is obtained through the use of a Lagrangian multiplier method by setting as objective of the control a velocity matching profile or an increase or decrease in the turbulent kinetic energy. The optimality system is solved with an in-house finite element code and numerical results are reported in order to show the validity of this approach.