Towards Large-Eddy Simulation of Turbulent Flow in a Centrifugal Impeller
Large-eddy simulation (LES) using wall-adapting local eddy-viscosity (WALE) subgrid scale model has been applied towards elucidating the complex turbulent flow physics in a centrifugal impeller. Several canonical cases of increased complexity were analyzed to better understand the advantages and challenges of applying the LES framework to the aforementioned target problem. These include turbulent flow in a rotating channel, a straight and a curved duct. Results obtained with LES are compared in detail with two-equation eddy-viscosity Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence models widely used in industry, as well as, for some of the canonical cases, with hybrid RANS/LES approaches such as the detached eddy simulation (DES) and scale-adaptive simulation (SAS). Finally, LES has been applied to turbulent flow in NASA CC3 centrifugal impeller with grids of increased resolution (up to 100 million computational cells per passage).