Verification and Validation of the Caelus Library: Incompressible Turbulence Models

In this work verification and validation of Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence models for incompressible flows was performed on the numerical library, Caelus [1]. Caelus is free and open source licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL). The focus of this study is on the verification and validation of the k-ω SST [2, 3], Spalart-Allmaras [4], and realizable k-ε models [5]. The cases used in this work include the zero pressure gradient flat plate, two-dimensional bump in a channel flow, NACA 0012 airfoil, and backward facing step. All cases except the backward facing step include mesh dependency studies. A comprehensive description of the test cases and computed results are provided. The results were, in general, found to be in excellent agreement with external data suggesting that the turbulence model implementations in Caelus are correct. A companion study on verification and validation of a predictor corrector steady-state solver algorithm [6] had similar goals and results as this work.