LES and Hybrid RANS-LES Simulation of a Pulsating Channel Flow

Simulation of turbulent boundary layers for flows characterized by unsteady driving conditions is important for solving complicated engineering problems such as combustion, blood flow in stenosed arteries, and flow over immersed structures. These flows are often dominated by complex vortical structures, regions of varying turbulence intensities, and fluctuating pressure fields. Pulsating channel flow is one such case that presents a unique set of challenges for newly developed and existing turbulence models used in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers. In the present study, performance of the dynamic hybrid RANS-LES model (DHRL) with exponential time averaging (ETA) is evaluated against Monotonically Integrated Large Eddy Simulation (MILES) and a previously documented LES study for a fully developed channel flow with a time-periodic driving pressure gradient. Results indicate that MILES over predicts mean streamwise velocity for all forcing frequencies while the DHRL model with ETA provides a method for improved results, especially for the lower frequencies. It is concluded that a hybrid RANS-LES model with ETA is a useful alternative to simulate unsteady non-stationary flows but further work is needed to determine the appropriate filter width for ETA to significantly improve the predictive capabilities of the DHRL model.