LES Sub-Grid Diffusion for Lagrangian Particles

A continuous random walk (CRW) turbulent diffusion model was developed for Lagrangian particles within flow fields simulated by hybrid RANS/LES methodologies. For RANS flow-fields, the conventional time-scale and length-scale constants were determined by the turbulence intensity and dissipation values computed by the single-phase solver with a k-ω (Menter SST) model and subsequent comparison with turbulent particle diffusion experimental results of Snyder & Lumley (1971). This allowed validation against data for four particle types ranging from hollow glass to copper shot in grid-generated turbulence. The stochastic diffusion model was then extended to utilize the Nichols-Nelson k-ω hybrid RANS-LES turbulence model in a more complex turbulent flow resulting from the unsteady, three dimensional wake of a cylinder at Mach number of 0.1 and Reynolds number (Re_D) of 800. The gas flow was computed with a 5^th-order upwind-biased scheme. Throughout the wake, the sub-grid random walk model yielded good predictions of particle diffusion as compared with DNS. Also, these results indicate that crossing trajectory effects and inertia-based drift corrections are critical to handling a variety of particle Stokes numbers as well as regions of non-homogeneous turbulence, even when most of the kinetic energy is captured with the resolved-scales of an LES approach.