Investigation of the Turbulent Schmidt Number Effects On Numerical Modelling Of Vortex-Type Stormwater Retention Ponds

Abstract

Achieving accurate and reliable CFD modelling results often is the subject of scrutiny because of the importance of the inputs in those simulations. If turbulence modelling is based on Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations, estimating the turbulent scalar transport requires the definition of the turbulent Schmidt number (Sct), defined as the ratio of momentum diffusivity to mass one in a turbulent flow. However, no universal value has been accepted for this parameter as it is a property of turbulent flows. The practical role of establishing a suitable Sct in numerical studies of stormwater retention ponds is of the utmost importance because the assessment of the hydraulic efficiency of them is based on output mass concentration of tracer tests. In this study, several numerical simulations of a vortex-type stormwater retention pond were systematically carried out using FLOW-3D. A range of various turbulent Schmidt numbers were introduced in numerical simulations performed by different number of computational cells to investigate mesh sensitivity. Moreover, the effects of maximum turbulent mixing length as a user-defined or automatically computed value were assessed. The outcome of this study is an established numerical model with a constant value of maximum turbulent mixing length equal to 7% of the hydraulic diameter along with Sct= 0.625 which provides a close agreement with experimental results. Noticeably, the peak values of numerical dimensionless RDT curves are dramatically decreased, resulted in a close match with experimental results. This concludes that FLOW-3D has a considerable ability to appropriately predict mass diffusivity in vortex-type physics of turbulent flows.