A general method for determining the boundary-layer thickness in non-equilibrium flows

While the computation of the boundary-layer thickness is straightforward for canonical equilibrium flows, there are no established definitions for general non-equilibrium flows. In this work, a new method is developed based on a local reconstruction of the “inviscid” velocity profile UI [y] resulting from the Bernoulli equation. The boundary-layer thickness δ99 is then defined as the location where U/UI = 0.99, which is consistent with its classical definition for the zero-pressure-gradient boundary layers (ZPGBLs). The new method is parameter free, and can be deployed for both internal and external flows without resorting to an iterative procedure, numerical integration, or numerical differentiation. The superior performance of the new method over various existing methods is demonstrated by applying the methods to laminar and turbulent boundary layers and two flows over airfoils. Numerical experiments reveal that the new method is more accurate and more robust than existing methods, and it is applicable for flows over a wide range of Reynolds numbers.

A low-dissipation shock-capturing framework with flexible nonlinear dissipation control

In this work, a framework to construct arbitrarily high-order low-dissipation shock-capturing schemes with flexible and controllable nonlinear dissipation for convection-dominated problems is proposed. While a set of candidate stencils of incremental width is constructed, each one is indicated as smooth or nonsmooth by the ENO-like stencil selection procedure proposed in the targeted essentially non-oscillatory (TENO) scheme [Fu et al., Journal of Computational Physics 305 (2016): 333-359]. Rather than being discarded directly as with TENO schemes, the nonsmooth candidates are filtered by an extra nonlinear limiter, such as a monotonicity-preserving (MP) limiter or a total variation diminishing (TVD) limiter. Consequently, high-order reconstruction is achieved by assembling candidate fluxes with optimal linear weights since they are either smooth reconstructions or filtered ones which feature good non-oscillation property. A weight renormalization procedure as with the standard TENO paradigm is not necessary. This new framework concatenates the concepts of TENO, WENO and other nonlinear limiters for shock-capturing, and provides a new insight to designing low-dissipation nonlinear schemes. Through the adaptation of nonlinear limiters, nonlinear dissipation in the newly proposed framework can be controlled separately without affecting the performance in smooth regions. Based on the proposed framework, a family of new six- and eight-point nonlinear schemes with controllable dissipation is proposed. A set of critical benchmark cases involving strong discontinuities and broadband fluctuations is simulated. Numerical results reveal that the proposed new schemes capture discontinuities sharply and resolve the high-wavenumber fluctuations with low dissipation, while maintaining the desired accuracy order in smooth regions.

Shock-induced heating and transition to turbulence in a hypersonic boundary layer

The interaction between an incident shock wave and a Mach-6 undisturbed hypersonic laminar boundary layer over a cold wall is addressed using direct numerical simulations (DNS) and wall-modeled large-eddy simulations (WMLES) at different angles of incidence. At sufficiently high shock-incidence angles, the boundary layer transitions to turbulence via breakdown of near-wall streaks shortly downstream of the shock impingement, without the need of any inflow free-stream disturbances. The transition causes a localized significant increase in the Stanton number and skin-friction coefficient, with high incidence angles augmenting the peak thermomechanical loads in an approximately linear way. Statistical analyses of the boundary layer downstream of the interaction for each case are provided that quantify streamwise spatial variations of the Reynolds analogy factors and indicate a breakdown of the Morkovin’s hypothesis near the wall, where velocity and temperature become correlated. A modified strong Reynolds analogy with a fixed turbulent Prandtl number is observed to perform best. Conventional transformations fail at collapsing the mean velocity profiles on the incompressible log law. The WMLES prompts transition and peak heating, delays separation, and advances reattachment, thereby shortening the separation bubble. When the shock leads to transition, WMLES provides predictions of DNS peak thermomechanical loads within $\pm 10\%$ at a computational cost lower than DNS by two orders of magnitude. Downstream of the interaction, in the turbulent boundary layer, WMLES agrees well with DNS results for the Reynolds analogy factor, the mean profiles of velocity and temperature, including the temperature peak, and the temperature/velocity correlation.

A new ODE-based turbulence wall model accounting for pressure gradient and Reynolds number effects

In wall-modeled large-eddy simulations (WMLES), the near-wall model plays a significant role in predicting the skin friction, although the majority of the boundary layer is resolved by the outer large-eddy simulation (LES) solver. In this work, we aim at developing a new ordinary differential equation (ODE)-based wall model, which is as simple as the classical equilibrium model yet capable of capturing non-equilibrium effects and low Reynolds number effects. The proposed model reformulates the classical equilibrium model by introducing a new non-dimensional mixing-length function. The new mixing-length function is parameterized in terms of the boundary layer shape factor instead of the commonly used pressure-gradient parameters. As a result, the newly introduced mixing-length function exhibits great universality within the viscous sublayer, the buffer layer, and the log region (i.e., 0 < y < 0.1δ, where the wall model is typically deployed in a WMLES setup). The performance of the new model is validated by predicting a wide range of canonical flows with the friction Reynolds number between 200 and 5200, and the Clauser pressure-gradient parameter between-0.3 and 4. Compared to the classical equilibrium wall model, remarkable error reduction in terms of the skin friction prediction is obtained by the new model. Moreover, since the new model is ODE-based, it is straightforward to be deployed for predicting flows with complex geometries and therefore promising for a wide range of applications.