Second-order closure models for rotating turbulent flows

Abstract

The physical properties of the commonly used second-order closure models are examined theoretically for rotating turbulent flows. Comparisons are made with results which are a rigorous consequence of the Navier-Stokes equations for the problem of fully-developed turbulent channel flow in a rapidly rotating framework. It is demonstrated that all existing second-order closures yield spurious physical results for this test problem of rotating channel flow. In fact, the results obtained are shown to be substantially more unphysical than those obtained from the simpler k-epsilon and k-l models. Modifications in the basic structure of these second-order closure models are proposed which can alleviate this problem.