Testing an improved artificial viscosity advection scheme to minimisewiggles in large eddy simulation of buoyant jet in crossflow

Abstract

Obtaining accurate and wiggle free Large Eddy Simulation (LES) results of high Re configurations with obstacles is a challenge, especially when the resolution is moderate. This study focusses on LES of buoyant jet in crossflow (JICF). The zone in front of the jet is sensitive for wiggle formation because the jet acts as an obstacle. Only 10 grid cells over the diameter of the jet at outflow are used in order to be able to simulate very large mixing areas with limited CPU power. The resolution increases rapidly to 30-50 cells over the diameter of the bend over jet further downstream. This study tests an artificial viscosity advection scheme with sixth order dissipation, called AV6, which dissipates wiggles adequately with almost no dissipation on physical relevant scales. This desirable behaviour is demonstrated by a Fourier analysis of the Advection-Diffusion equation and turbulent flow simulations. AV6 is a mix of, and improvement over, the artificial viscosity scheme of Jameson et al. (1981) with fourth order dissipation, here called AV4, and a fifth order upwind scheme (UPW5) of Wicker and Skamarock (Mon Weather Rev 130:2088, 2002). AV6 is a robust, simple and easy to implement advection scheme and the total computational time of a simulation with AV6 is only a few percent more than with the second order central scheme (CDS2). Three realistic turbulent flow problems, relevant for buoyant JICF, are used to compare the performance of AV6 with CDS2, AV4 and UPW5 with each other and with experiments. Different grid resolutions and sub-grid scale models are used. The three test cases are a non-buoyant JICF, a buoyant jet in weak coflow, and a buoyant JICF. Of all tested advection schemes, AV6 produces best results and is preferred for LES of buoyant JICF. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.