Assessment of LES Subgrid-scale Models and Investigation of Hydrodynamic Behaviour for an Axisymmetrical Bluff Body Flow

This work is concerned with the investigation of fluid-mechanical behaviour and the performance of different subgrid-scale models for LES in the numerical prediction of a confined axisymmetrical bluff-body flow. Four subgrid-scale turbulence models comprising the Smagorinsky model, Dynamic Smagorinsky model, WALE model and subgrid turbulent kinetic energy model, are validated and compared directly against the experimental data. Two different mesh counts are used for the LES studies, one with a higher mesh resolution in the shear layer than the other. It is found that increasing the mesh resolution improves the time-averaged fluctuating velocity profiles, but has less effect on the time-averaged filtered velocity profiles. A comparison against experiment shows that the recirculation zone length is well predicted using LES. The accuracy of the four different subgrid scale models is then assessed by comparing the LES results using the dense mesh with the experiment. Comparisons with the time-averaged axial and radial velocity profiles demonstrate that LES displays good agreement with the experimental data, with the essential flow features captured both qualitative and quantitatively. The subgrid velocity also matches well with the experimental results, but a slight underprediction of the inner shear layer is observed for all subgrid models. In general, it is found that the Smagorinsky and WALE models are more dissipative than the Dynamic Smagorinsky model and subgrid TKE model. Comparison of the spectra against the experiment shows that LES can capture dominant features of the turbulent flow with reasonable accuracy, and weak spectral peaks related to the Kevin-Helmholtz instability and helical vortex shedding are present.