Assessment of Extensions for an Eddy Viscosity Turbulence Model for Vortical Flows

Numerical modeling in fluid dynamics plays an important role in the design and development of aircrafts. The effectiveness of the flow prediction capabilities of a flow solver depends on the underlying turbulence model. One of the widely used two-equation turbulence models is the Menter-Shear Stress Transport (SST) model, which is relatively robust and requires less computational resources for the simulation of industrial flow applications in comparison to that of more sophisticated approaches as Reynolds stress models. Although the model application is relatively simple, the solution accuracy is relatively high and the results are of highly acceptable standards. The main drawback with the Menter-SST eddy viscosity model lies in the reproduction of some complex flow phenomenons such as vortical flows. It has been observed that the model can not capture the effects of the system rotation and streamline curvature effects, and performs weakly for wake flows. To offer a solution for the above mentioned problem, an extension of the two-equation model with correction terms for these special flows was suggested by Menter and examined in this work. In addition, two other model corrections have been implemented. Therefore, it is of interest to calibrate this extended eddy viscosity model to improve its prediction capabilities for these kinds of flows so as to further improve the compromise between the computational cost and solution accuracy.