Hybrid RANS-LES Simulation of Turbulent Heat Transfer in a Channel Flow With Imposed Spanwise and Streamwise Mean Temperature Gradient

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results for turbulent flow and heat transfer in a plane channel are presented. This study presents an idealized fully-developed planar channel flow case for which the mean velocity gradient is non-zero only in the wall-normal direction, and the mean temperature gradient is imposed to be uniform and non-zero in the streamwise or spanwise direction. Previous studies have documented direct numerical simulation results for periodic channel flow with mean temperature gradient in both the streamwise and wall-normal directions, but limited investigations exist documenting the effect of imposed spanwise gradient. The objective of this study is to evaluate turbulent heat flux predictions for three different classes of modeling approach: Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS), large-eddy simulation (LES), and hybrid RANS-LES. Results are compared to available DNS data at Prandtl number of 0.71 and Reynolds number of 180 based on friction velocity and channel half-width. Specific models evaluated include the k-ω SST RANS model, monotonically integrated LES (MILES), improved delayed detached eddy simulation (IDDES), and dynamic hybrid RANS-LES (DHRL). The DHRL model includes both the standard formulation that has been previously documented in the literature as well as a modified version developed specifically to improve predictive capability for flows in which the primary mean velocity and mean temperature gradients are not closely aligned. The modification consists of using separate RANS-to-LES blending parameters in the momentum and energy equations. Results are interrogated to evaluate the performance of the three different model types and specifically to evaluate the performance of the new modified DHRL variant compared with the baseline version.