SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “turbulence methods”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,297 records · Page 72

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS1992

Thermal stratification potential in rocket engine coolant channels

The potential for rocket engine coolant channel flow stratification was computationally studied. A conjugate, 3-D, conduction/advection analysis code (SINDA/FLUINT) was used. Core fluid temperatures were predicted to vary by over 360 K across the coolant channel, at the throat section, indicating that the conventional assumption of a fully mixed fluid may be extremely inaccurate. Because of the thermal stratification of the fluid, the walls exposed to the rocket engine exhaust gases will be hotter than an assumption of full mixing would imply. In this analysis, wall temperatures were 160 K hotter in the turbulent mixing case than in the full mixing case. The discrepancy between the full mixing and turbulent mixing analyses increased with increasing heat transfer. Both analysis methods predicted identical channel resistances at the coolant inlet, but in the stratified analysis the thermal resistance was negligible. The implications are significant. Neglect of thermal stratification could lead to underpredictions in nozzle wall temperatures. Even worse, testing at subscale conditions may be inadequate for modeling conditions that would exist in a full scale engine.

Kacynski, Kenneth J.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Computational fluid dynamics combustion analysis evaluation

This study involves the development of numerical modelling in spray combustion. These modelling efforts are mainly motivated to improve the computational efficiency in the stochastic particle tracking method as well as to incorporate the physical submodels of turbulence, combustion, vaporization, and dense spray effects. The present mathematical formulation and numerical methodologies can be casted in any time-marching pressure correction methodologies (PCM) such as FDNS code and MAST code. A sequence of validation cases involving steady burning sprays and transient evaporating sprays will be included.

Kim, Y. M.↗

NASA NTRS1992

A mapping closure for turbulent scalar mixing using a time-evolving reference field

A general mapping-closure approach for modeling scalar mixing in homogeneous turbulence is developed. This approach is different from the previous methods in that the reference field also evolves according to the same equations as the physical scalar field. The use of a time-evolving Gaussian reference field results in a model that is similar to the mapping closure model of Pope (1991), which is based on the methodology of Chen et al. (1989). Both models yield identical relationships between the scalar variance and higher-order moments, which are in good agreement with heat conduction simulation data and can be consistent with any type of epsilon(phi) evolution. The present methodology can be extended to any reference field whose behavior is known. The possibility of a beta-pdf reference field is explored. The shortcomings of the mapping closure methods are discussed, and the limit at which the mapping becomes invalid is identified.

Girimaji, Sharath S.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Incompressible Navier-Stokes computations of rotating flows

Flow through pump components, such as an inducer and an impeller, is efficiently simulated by solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The solution method is based on the pseudocompressibility approach and uses an implicit-upwind differencing scheme together with the Gauss-Seidel line relaxation method. Current computations use one-equation Baldwin-Barth turbulence model which is derived from a simplified form of the standard k-epsilon model equations. The resulting computer code is applied to the flow analysis inside a generic rocket engine pump inducer, a fuel pump impeller, and SSME high-pressure fuel turbopump impeller. Numerical results of inducer flow are compared with experimental measurements. Flow analyses at 80-, 100-, and 120-percent of design conditions are presented.

Kiris, Cetin↗

NASA NTRS1994

Convergence rate enhancement of navier-stokes codes on clustered grids

Our Sensitivity-Based Minimal Residual (SBMR) method which is based on our earlier Distributed Minimal Residual (DMR) method allows each component of the solution vector in a system of equations to have its own convergence speed. Our global SBMR method was found to consistently outperform the DMR method while requiring considerably less computer memory. Recently, we have developed and tested a new Line SBMR or LSBMR method and a Time-Step-Scaling (TSS) method that are even more robust and computationally efficient than our global SBMR method, especially on highly clustered computational grids in laminar and turbulent flow computations.

Choi, Kwang-Yoon↗

NASA NTRS1996

Resolving High Amplitude Surface Motion with Diffusing Light

A new technique has been developed for the purpose of imaging high amplitude surface motion. With this method one can quantitatively measure the transition to ripple wave turbulence. In addition, one can measure the phase of the turbulent state. These experiments reveal strong coherent structures in turbulent range of motion.

Wright, W.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Hypersonic Wind Tunnels: Latest Citations from the Aerospace Database

The bibliography contains citations concerning the design, construction, operation, performance, and use of hypersonic wind tunnels. References cover the design of flow nozzles, diffusers, test sections, and ejectors for tunnels driven by compressed air, high-pressure gases, or cryogenic liquids. Methods for flow calibration, boundary layer control, local and freestream turbulence reduction, and force measurement are discussed. Intrusive and non-intrusive instrumentation, sources of measurement error, and measurement corrections are also covered. The citations also include the testing of inlets, nozzles, airfoils, and other components of hypersonic aerospace vehicles. Comprehensive coverage of supersonic and blowdown wind tunnels, and force balance systems for wind tunnels are covered in separate bibliographies.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES↗

NASA NTRS1996

Supersonic Wind Tunnels (Latest Citations from the Aerospace Database)

The bibliography contains citations concerning the design, construction, operation, performance, and use of supersonic wind tunnels. References cover the design of flow nozzles, diffusers, test sections, and ejectors for tunnels driven by compressed air, high-pressure gases, or cryogenic liquids. Methods for flow calibration, boundary layer control, local and freestream turbulence reduction, and force measurement are discussed. Instrusive and non-intrusive instrumentation, sources of measurement error, and measurement corrections are also covered. The citations also include the testing of inlets, nozzles, airfoils, and other components of aerospace vehicles that must operate supersonically. Comprehensive coverage of wind tunnel force balancing systems, and blowdown and supersonic wind tunnels are covered in separate bibliographies.(Contains 50-250 citations and includes a subject term index and title list.)

WIND TUNNELS↗

NASA NTRS1994

Incompressible Navier-Stokes Computations with Heat Transfer

The existing pseudocompressibility method for the system of incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is extended to heat transfer problems by including the energy equation. The solution method is based on the pseudo compressibility approach and uses an implicit-upwind differencing scheme together with the Gauss-Seidel line relaxation method. Current computations use one-equation Baldwin-Barth turbulence model which is derived from a simplified form of the standard k-epsilon model equations. Both forced and natural convection problems are examined. Numerical results from turbulent reattaching flow behind a backward-facing step will be compared against experimental measurements for the forced convection case. The validity of Boussinesq approximation to simplify the buoyancy force term will be investigated. The natural convective flow structure generated by heat transfer in a vertical rectangular cavity will be studied. The numerical results will be compared by experimental measurements by Morrison and Tran.

Kiris, Cetin↗

NASA NTRS1997

Transition and Turbulence Modeling for Blunt-Body Wake Flows

This study attempts t o improve the modeling and computational prediction of high- speed transitional wake flows. The recently developed kappa - zeta (Enstrophy) turbulence model is coupled with a newly developed transition prediction method and implemented in an implicit flow solver well-suited to hypersonic flows. In this model, transition onset is determined as part of the solution. Results obtained using the new model for a 70- deg blunted cone/sting geometry demonstrate better agreement with experimental heat- transfer measurements when compared to laminar calculations as well as solutions using the kappa - omega model. Results are also presented for the situation where transition onset is preselected. It is shown that, in this case, results are quite sensitive to location of the transition point.

Nance, Robert P.↗

NASA NTRS1960

Application of Variational Methods to the Thermal Entrance Region of Ducts

A variational method is presented for solving eigenvalue problems which arise in connection with the analysis of convective heat transfer in the thermal entrance region of ducts. Consideration is given, to both situations where the temperature profile depends upon one cross-sectional coordinate (e.g. circular tube) or upon two cross-sectional coordinates (e.g. rectangular duct). The variational method is illustrated and verified by application to laminar heat transfer in a circular tube and a parallel-plate channel, and good agreement with existing numerical solutions is attained. Then, application is made to laminar heat transfer in a square duct as a check, an alternate computation for the square duct is made using a method indicated by Misaps and Pohihausen. The variational method can, in principle, also be applied to problems in turbulent heat transfer.

Sparrow, E. M.↗

NASA NTRS2016

Development of a High-Order Space-Time Matrix-Free Adjoint Solver

The growth in computational power and algorithm development in the past few decades has granted the science and engineering community the ability to simulate flows over complex geometries, thus making Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools indispensable in analysis and design. Currently, one of the pacing items limiting the utility of CFD for general problems is the prediction of unsteady turbulent ows.1{3 Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) methods, which predict a time-invariant mean flowfield, struggle to provide consistent predictions when encountering even mild separation, such as the side-of-body separation at a wing-body junction. NASA's Transformative Tools and Technologies project is developing both numerical methods and physical modeling approaches to improve the prediction of separated flows. A major focus of this e ort is efficient methods for resolving the unsteady fluctuations occurring in these flows to provide valuable engineering data of the time-accurate flow field for buffet analysis, vortex shedding, etc. This approach encompasses unsteady RANS (URANS), large-eddy simulations (LES), and hybrid LES-RANS approaches such as Detached Eddy Simulations (DES). These unsteady approaches are inherently more expensive than traditional engineering RANS approaches, hence every e ort to mitigate this cost must be leveraged. Arguably, the most cost-effective approach to improve the efficiency of unsteady methods is the optimal placement of the spatial and temporal degrees of freedom (DOF) using solution-adaptive methods.

Adjoint↗

NASA NTRS2018

Numerical and Experimental Examination of Turbulent Mixing of a Heated Jet in Crossflow

The injection of fully-developed turbulent heated air from a tube into a cooler turbulent duct flow is examined, as an analogy to film cooled turbine blades. A LES numerical model is developed and applied in which tube and duct turbulence inflow effects are emulated using a divergence-free synthetic eddy method (SEM). For direct comparison, a hot-wire experiment is conducted within the ERB test cell SW-6 at NASA Glenn Research Center. Results related to velocity, temperature, and heat flux are obtained numerically and experimentally for a blowing ratio of 1.2, involving a 36 K temperature difference. The relative effect on the solutions of tube and duct inflow turbulence is systematically evaluated. The impact of inherent low-pass filtering of temperature measurements and probe wire offset on the experimental results are addressed.

Large Eddy Simulation↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

USM3D-ME Revised SA-neg Implementation and Assessment for Seventh Drag Prediction Workshop Solutions

Simulations performed by an unstructured-grid, cell-centered, finite-volume, mixed-element flow solver USM3D-MEwere presented at the Seventh Drag Prediction Workshop (DPW-7). Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solutions for the NASA high-speed common research model wing-body configuration were computed using a new implementation of the negative variant of the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model (SA-neg) with hierarchical adaptive nonlinear iteration method (HANIM).ThisUSM3D-ME enhancement improved efficiency and robustness of RANS solutions resulting in fast iterative convergence to machine zero residuals on mixed-element unstructured grids provided by the DPW-7 organizing committee. This paper presents theoretical foundations for the new implementation of the SA-neg model and analyzesUSM3D-ME solutions for flow conditions corresponding to the required DPW-7 cases.

Boris Diskin↗

DOE OSTI2021

Transforming Energy through Computational Excellence. Exascale Computing: Combustion; Deep Learning for Presumed Probability Density Function (PDF) Models

NREL researchers use advanced machine learning techniques to define improved methods using deep learning models to resolve reacting flows in turbulent combustion flows, reducing the computational burden, increasing computational speed, and improving accuracy. These advancements reduce cost and improve fidelity of rapid-turn-around engineering calculations.

combustion↗

DOE OSTI2026

Validation of OpenPronghorn for Periodic Hill Flow Separation

OpenPronghorn is an open-source, MOOSE-based thermal-hydraulics simulation tool used for advanced reactor analysis. As an open-source code, it offers a transparent framework for validating governing equations, assumptions, and numerical methods against established benchmarks. This study evaluates OpenPronghorn's RANS turbulence model against the ERCOFTAC Case 81 periodic hill benchmark, a standard test case for separated turbulent flow featuring curved-wall separation, recirculation, shear-layer development, and reattachment. Streamwise velocity profiles predicted by OpenPronghorn were compared to reference LES data at multiple x/h locations. Results show that OpenPronghorn captures the overall trend of the velocity profiles, but the largest discrepancies occur in the separated-flow region, where turbulence is highly anisotropic and strongly affected by adverse pressure gradients and wall curvature—conditions that are inherently difficult for standard RANS models to resolve. Future work will test alternative k-e model variants and correction terms to improve prediction accuracy in this region.

42 - ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2025

A High-Order Discontinuous Galerkin Spectral Element Method for Compressible Reacting Flows

High-order methods have recently been shown to be an effective tool for high-fidelity flow computations like direct numerical simulations and large eddy simulations due to their strong balance between accuracy and computational cost. In this work, a high-order discontinuous Galerkin spectral element method (DGSEM) is developed to solve the chemically reactive Euler equations encountered in high-speed combustion. To handle the disparate length and time scales associated with these equations, we develop a novel method which combines the spectral accuracy of the SEM with the flexibility of DG approach. Thus, the framework is well suited to capture turbulence in smooth regions of the flow, while maintaining numerical stability in the presence of shocks. The numerical method is implemented within the spectral element solver Nek5000. Validation cases are conducted for both non-reactive and reactive discontinuous flows to demonstrate the solver capability. In particular, canonical one-dimensional and two-dimensional detonation simulations are performed and the high-order numerical results are validated against available literature data.

computational fluid dynamics (CFD)↗

NASA NTRS2000

A New Method for Accurate Treatment of Flow Equations in Cylindrical Coordinates Using Series Expansions

The motivation of this work is the ongoing effort at the Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) to use large eddy simulation (LES) techniques to calculate the noise radiated by jet engines. The focus on engine exhaust noise reduction is motivated by the fact that a significant reduction has been achieved over the last decade on the other main sources of acoustic emissions of jet engines, such as the fan and turbomachinery noise, which gives increased priority to jet noise. To be able to propose methods to reduce the jet noise based on results of numerical simulations, one first has to be able to accurately predict the spatio-temporal distribution of the noise sources in the jet. Though a great deal of understanding of the fundamental turbulence mechanisms in high-speed jets was obtained from direct numerical simulations (DNS) at low Reynolds numbers, LES seems to be the only realistic available tool to obtain the necessary near-field information that is required to estimate the acoustic radiation of the turbulent compressible engine exhaust jets. The quality of jet-noise predictions is determined by the accuracy of the numerical method that has to capture the wide range of pressure fluctuations associated with the turbulence in the jet and with the resulting radiated noise, and by the boundary condition treatment and the quality of the mesh. Higher Reynolds numbers and coarser grids put in turn a higher burden on the robustness and accuracy of the numerical method used in this kind of jet LES simulations. As these calculations are often done in cylindrical coordinates, one of the most important requirements for the numerical method is to provide a flow solution that is not contaminated by numerical artifacts. The coordinate singularity is known to be a source of such artifacts. In the present work we use 6th order Pade schemes in the non-periodic directions to discretize the full compressible flow equations. It turns out that the quality of jet-noise predictions using these schemes is especially sensitive to the type of equation treatment at the singularity axis. The objective of this work is to develop a generally applicable numerical method for treating the singularities present at the polar axis, which is particularly suitable for highly accurate finite-differences schemes (e.g., Pade schemes) on non-staggered grids. The main idea is to reinterpret the regularity conditions developed in the context of pseudo-spectral methods. A set of exact equations at the singularity axis is derived using the appropriate series expansions for the variables in the original set of equations. The present treatment of the equations preserves the same level of accuracy as for the interior scheme. We also want to point out the wider utility of the method, proposed here in the context of compressible flow equations, as its extension for incompressible flows or for any other set of equations that are solved on a non-staggered mesh in cylindrical coordinates with finite-differences schemes of various level of accuracy is straightforward. The robustness and accuracy of the proposed technique is assessed by comparing results from simulations of laminar forced-jets and turbulent compressible jets using LES with similar calculations in which the equations are solved in Cartesian coordinates at the polar axis, or in which the singularity is removed by employing a staggered mesh in the radial direction without a mesh point at r = 0.

Constantinescu, G.S.↗