Large Eddy Simulation of Confined Swirling Coaxial Jets

Large eddy simulations (LES) have been carried out for confined swirling coaxial jets discharged into a suddenly expanded pipe, which was studied experimentally by Roback and Johnson [1, 2]. The computations were made using a parallelized finite-volume-based Navier-Stokes solver that is second-order accurate in time and space, and permits use of unstructured meshes. The computational domain starts from an inlet placed upstream of the swirl generator, which makes the inlet boundary condition easy to specify. Subgrid-scale turbulent stresses were modeled using a dynamic Smagorinsky model applicable to complex three-dimensional flows without any statistically homogeneous directions. Subgrid-scale turbulent scalar flux is modeled using a constant Schmidt number in conjunction with the dynamically computed subgrid-scale turbulent viscosity. The LES predictions were found to closely reproduce the salient features of the flow and the species concentration downstream of the expansion. One of the conclusions was that a good resolution of the mean flow and turbulence in the upstream region is crucial in accurately predicting the mixing downstream of the expansion.