Date of Award

Summer 8-14-2015

Author's Department

Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

In this thesis, various turbulence models are used for simulating internal vortical flow, both turbulent and laminar, with large recirculation by considering the flow in a 2-D lid-driven square cavity and a 3-D lid driven cubic box. The accuracy of the newly developed Wray-Agarwal (WA) one equation turbulence model is compared against two well-known industry standard turbulence models; the Spalart-Allmaras (SA) and the Shear-Stress-Transport (SST) k-ω models. The simulations are performed by numerically solving the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations in conjunction with WA, SA and SST k-ω models and comparing the results with the available experimental data and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) results. 2-D numerical solutions are obtained at Reynolds numbers of 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, and 100,000. 3-D numerical solutions are obtained at Reynolds numbers of 3200 and 10,000. All numerical calculation are compared with other numerical results available in the literature. The open-source CFD code OpenFOAM is used to compute the flow field. Computational results clearly demonstrate that the Wray-Agarwal model outperforms in accuracy the Spalart-Allmaras and Shear-Stress-Transport k-ω models at all Reynolds numbers considered.


Language

English (en)

Chair

Ramesh Agarwal

Committee Members

David Peters, Michael Wendl

Comments

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K7FT8J8S

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