Uncertainty Estimation for Numerical Solutions of Wall Bounded Turbulent Flows

In this study numerical solutions are presented for a steady state, incompressible, 2-D turbulent flow near a wall. For this specific problem a manufactured (exact) solution was provided by the organizers of the 2006 Lisbon Workshop [6]. With the help of manufactured solution, assessment of the true error and other relevant uncertainty measures are possible. The calculations were performed using the commercial flow solver FLUENT along with some user defined functions to define source terms and velocity profiles at boundaries. Though the flow regime is turbulent; the numerical solution is carried out for pseudo-laminar flow. This was done in order to avoid the errors implicit in turbulence models. The transformation from turbulent to laminar flow was done by defining a momentum source term which precludes the pressure gradient term. A detailed grid convergence analysis was performed. Using three-grid triplets the limiting values of the variables solved as the grid size tends to zero were calculated using different extrapolations. The L₂ norms of the true error obtained from various extrapolations are assessed. These results exhibit solution convergence as the grid size decreases. It was also shown that cubic spline extrapolation perform the best among the methods considered.