scholarly journals Entrainment and Mixing in Stratocumulus: Effects of a New Explicit Subgrid-Scale Scheme for Large-Eddy Simulations with Particle-Based Microphysics

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (7) ◽  
pp. 1955-1973 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Hoffmann ◽  
Graham Feingold

Abstract The entrainment and mixing of free-tropospheric air is an essential component of the observed microphysical structure of stratocumulus clouds. Since the relevant scales involved in this process are usually smaller than the grid spacing of typical large-eddy simulations (LESs), their correct representation is difficult. To adequately accommodate these small-scale processes, we apply a recently developed approach that explicitly simulates LES subgrid-scale (SGS) turbulence fluctuation of supersaturation using the one-dimensional linear eddy model. As a result of reduced numerical diffusion and the ability to explicitly represent the SGS distribution of liquid water and supersaturation, entrainment rates tend to be lower in the new approach compared to simulations without it. Furthermore, cloud holes comprising free-tropospheric air with negligible liquid water are shown to persist longer in the stratocumulus deck. Their mixing with the cloud is shown to be more sensitive to the microphysical composition of the cloud as a result of the explicitly resolved inhomogeneous mixing, which is also confirmed analytically. Moreover, inhomogeneous mixing is shown to decrease the droplet concentration and to increase droplet growth significantly, in contrast to previous studies. All in all, the simulations presented can be seen as a first step to bridge the gap between ultra-high-resolution direct numerical simulation and LES, allowing an appropriate representation of small-scale mixing processes, together with the large-scale dynamics of a stratocumulus system.

2002 ◽  
Vol 455 ◽  
pp. 195-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIELE CARATI ◽  
MICHAEL M. ROGERS ◽  
ALAN A. WRAY

A statistical ensemble of large-eddy simulations (LES) is run simultaneously for the same flow. The information provided by the different large-scale velocity fields is used in an ensemble-averaged version of the dynamic model. This produces local model parameters that only depend on the statistical properties of the flow. An important property of the ensemble-averaged dynamic procedure is that it does not require any spatial averaging and can thus be used in fully inhomogeneous flows. Also, the ensemble of LES provides statistics of the large-scale velocity that can be used for building new models for the subgrid-scale stress tensor. The ensemble-averaged dynamic procedure has been implemented with various models for three flows: decaying isotropic turbulence, forced isotropic turbulence, and the time-developing plane wake. It is found that the results are almost independent of the number of LES in the statistical ensemble provided that the ensemble contains at least 16 realizations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1342-1365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle G. Pressel ◽  
Siddhartha Mishra ◽  
Tapio Schneider ◽  
Colleen M. Kaul ◽  
Zhihong Tan

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Menon

Next-generation gas turbine and internal combustion engines are required to reduce pollutant emissions significantly and also to be fuel efficient. Accurate prediction of pollutant formation requires proper resolution of the spatio-temporal evolution of the unsteady mixing and combustion processes. Since conventional steady state methods are not able to deal with these features, methodology based on large-eddy simulations (LESs) is becoming a viable choice to study unsteady reacting flows. This paper describes a new LES methodology developed recently that has demonstrated a capability to simulate reacting turbulent flows accurately. A key feature of this new approach is the manner in which small-scale turbulent mixing and combustion processes are simulated. This feature allows proper characterization of the effects of both large-scale convection and small-scale mixing on the scalar processes, thereby providing a more accurate prediction of chemical reaction effects. LESs of high Reynolds number premixed flames in the flamelet regime and in the distributed reaction regime are used to describe the ability of the new subgrid combustion model.


2001 ◽  
Vol 427 ◽  
pp. 205-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE F. CARNEVALE ◽  
M. BRISCOLINI ◽  
P. ORLANDI

The buoyancy range, which represents a transition from large-scale wave-dominated motions to small-scale turbulence in the oceans and the atmosphere, is investigated through large-eddy simulations. The model presented here uses a continual forcing based on large-scale standing internal waves and has a spectral truncation in the isotropic inertial range. Evidence is presented for a break in the energy spectra from the anisotropic k−3 buoyancy range to the small-scale k−5/3 isotropic inertial range. Density structures that form during wave breaking and periods of high strain rate are analysed. Elongated vertical structures produced during periods of strong straining motion are found to collapse in the subsequent vertically compressional phase of the strain resulting in a zone or patch of mixed fluid.


Author(s):  
X. I. A. Yang ◽  
C. Meneveau

In recent years, there has been growing interest in large-eddy simulation (LES) modelling of atmospheric boundary layers interacting with arrays of wind turbines on complex terrain. However, such terrain typically contains geometric features and roughness elements reaching down to small scales that typically cannot be resolved numerically. Thus subgrid-scale models for the unresolved features of the bottom roughness are needed for LES. Such knowledge is also required to model the effects of the ground surface ‘underneath’ a wind farm. Here we adapt a dynamic approach to determine subgrid-scale roughness parametrizations and apply it for the case of rough surfaces composed of cuboidal elements with broad size distributions, containing many scales. We first investigate the flow response to ground roughness of a few scales. LES with the dynamic roughness model which accounts for the drag of unresolved roughness is shown to provide resolution-independent results for the mean velocity distribution. Moreover, we develop an analytical roughness model that accounts for the sheltering effects of large-scale on small-scale roughness elements. Taking into account the shading effect, constraints from fundamental conservation laws, and assumptions of geometric self-similarity, the analytical roughness model is shown to provide analytical predictions that agree well with roughness parameters determined from LES. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Wind energy in complex terrains’.


2006 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 526-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Kirkpatrick ◽  
A. S. Ackerman ◽  
D. E. Stevens ◽  
N. N. Mansour

Abstract In this paper the dynamic Smagorinsky model originally developed for engineering flows is adapted for simulations of the cloud-topped atmospheric boundary layer in which an anelastic form of the governing equations is used. The adapted model accounts for local buoyancy sources, vertical density stratification, and poor resolution close to the surface and calculates additional model coefficients for the subgrid-scale fluxes of potential temperature and total water mixing ratio. Results obtained with the dynamic model are compared with those obtained using two nondynamic models for simulations of a nocturnal marine stratocumulus cloud deck observed during the first research flight of the second Dynamics and Chemistry of Marine Stratocumulus (DYCOMS-II) field experiment. The dynamic Smagorinsky model is found to give better agreement with the observations for all parameters and statistics. The dynamic model also gives improved spatial convergence and resolution independence over the nondynamic models. The good results obtained with the dynamic model appear to be due primarily to the fact that it calculates minimal subgrid-scale fluxes at the inversion. Based on other results in the literature, it is suggested that entrainment in the DYCOMS-II case is due predominantly to isolated mixing events associated with overturning internal waves. While the behavior of the dynamic model is consistent with this entrainment mechanism, a similar tendency to switch off subgrid-scale fluxes at an interface is also observed in a case in which gradient transport by small-scale eddies has been found to be important. This indicates that there may be problems associated with the application of the dynamic model close to flow interfaces. One issue here involves the plane-averaging procedure used to stabilize the model, which is not justified when the averaging plane intersects a deforming interface. More fundamental, however, is that the behavior may be due to insufficient resolution in this region of the flow. The implications of this are discussed with reference to both dynamic and nondynamic subgrid-scale models, and a new approach to turbulence modeling for large-eddy simulations is proposed.


Author(s):  
Johan Westin ◽  
Pascal Veber ◽  
Lars Andersson ◽  
Carsten ’t Mannetje ◽  
Urban Andersson ◽  
...  

The present paper describes new experimental data of thermal mixing in a T-junction compared with results from Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) and Detached Eddy Simulations (DES). The experimental setup was designed in order to provide data suitable for validation of CFD-calculations. The data is obtained from temperature measurements with thermocouples located near the pipe wall, velocity measurements with Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) as well as single-point concentration measurements with Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF). The LES showed good agreement with the experimental data also when fairly coarse computational meshes were used. However, grid refinement studies revealed a fairly strong sensitivity to the grid resolution, and a simulation using a fine mesh with nearly 10 million cells significantly improved the results in the entire flow domain. The sensitivity to different unsteady inlet boundary conditions was however small, which shows that the strong large-scale instabilities that are present in the mixing region are triggered independent of the applied inlet perturbations. A shortcoming in the performed simulations is insufficient near-wall resolution, which resulted in poor predictions of the near-wall mean velocity profiles and the wall-shear stress. Simulations using DES improved the near-wall velocity predictions, but failed to predict the temperature fluctuations due to high levels of modeled turbulent viscosity that restrained the formation of small scale turbulence.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. 6563-6576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto de Lozar ◽  
Lukas Muessle

Abstract. Turbulence models predict low droplet-collision rates in stratocumulus clouds, which should imply a narrow droplet size distribution and little rain. Contrary to this expectation, rain is often observed in stratocumuli. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that some droplets can grow well above the average because small-scale turbulence allows them to reside at cloud top for a time longer than the convective-eddy time t*. Long-resident droplets can grow larger because condensation due to longwave radiative cooling, and collisions have more time to enhance droplet growth. We investigate the trajectories of 1 billion Lagrangian droplets in direct numerical simulations of a cloudy mixed-layer configuration that is based on observations from the flight 11 from the VERDI campaign. High resolution is employed to represent a well-developed turbulent state at cloud top. Only one-way coupling is considered. We observe that 70 % of the droplets spend less than 0.6t* at cloud top before leaving the cloud, while 15 % of the droplets remain at least 0.9t* at cloud top. In addition, 0.2 % of the droplets spend more than 2.5t* at cloud top and decouple from the large-scale convective eddies that brought them to the top, with the result that they become memoryless. Modeling collisions like a Poisson process leads to the conclusion that most rain droplets originate from those memoryless droplets. Furthermore, most long-resident droplets accumulate at the downdraft regions of the flow, which could be related to the closed-cell stratocumulus pattern. Finally, we see that condensation due to longwave radiative cooling considerably broadens the cloud-top droplet size distribution: 6.5 % of the droplets double their mass due to radiation in their time at cloud top. This simulated droplet size distribution matches the flight measurements, confirming that condensation due to longwave radiation can be an important mechanism for broadening the droplet size distribution in radiatively driven stratocumuli.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayank Tyagi ◽  
Sumanta Acharya

Abstract Large eddy simulations of jets in crossflow are performed to study the effect of energy containing scales present in the freestream on the penetration and spread of the coolant jet. Two specific freestream turbulence conditions are examined, one corresponding to 15% small scale Gaussian turbulence, and the other corresponding to a 15% freestream turbulence that satisfies the Von-Karman spectrum and has its peak energy specified in the small wave number range (large scales). The small-scale freestream turbulence can be viewed to be similar to grid generated turbulence. The large scale freestream turbulence spectrum has energy peak at a small wave number (corresponding to a specified length scale taken to be 4 hole diameters in this study) and has energy in the inertial subrange for large wave numbers. In the present study, the jets are issued through a row of square holes into the main crossflow. The jet to crossflow blowing ratio is 0.5 and the jet Reynolds number is approximately 4,700. Greater jet penetration and jet-mainstream mixing, in both the vertical and lateral directions, are observed for large-scale turbulence. The energy contained in large scales is mostly preserved although the energy carrying scales themselves undergo subsequent breakdown process due to the effect of the jet. In the nearfield of the jet, the large scales play a major role in enhancing the turbulent stresses, and the near wall transport. In the presence of the large scales, the horseshoe vortex is energized, and there is greater crossflow entrainment into the wake region. These large scale effects lead to significantly greater wall friction.


2009 ◽  
Vol 66 (9) ◽  
pp. 2844-2858 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meelis J. Zidikheri ◽  
Jorgen S. Frederiksen

Abstract A stochastic subgrid modeling method is used to parameterize horizontal and vertical subgrid-scale transfers in large-eddy simulations (LESs) of baroclinic flows with large-scale jets and energy spectra typical of the atmosphere. The approach represents the subgrid-scale eddies for LES (at resolutions of T63 and T31) by a stochastic model that takes into account the memory effects of turbulent eddies. The statistics of the model are determined from a higher-resolution (T126) direct numerical simulation (DNS). The simulations use a quasigeostrophic two-level model and the subgrid terms are inhomogeneous in the vertical and anisotropic in the horizontal and are represented by 2 × 2 matrices at each wavenumber. The parameterizations have the largest magnitudes at a cusp near the largest total wavenumbers of the truncations. At T63 the off-diagonal elements of the matrices are negligible (corresponding to effectively decoupled levels) and the diagonal elements are almost isotropic. At the lower resolution of T31 the off-diagonal elements are more important and even the diagonal elements are more anisotropic. At both resolutions, and for anisotropic or isotropized subgrid terms, LESs are in excellent agreement with higher-resolution DNS.


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