On the Computation of Compressible Turbulent Flows on Unstructured Grids

Abstract

An accurate, fast, matrix-free implicit method has been developed to solve compressible turbulent How problems using the Spalart and Allmaras one equation turbulence model on unstructured meshes. The mean-flow and turbulence-model equations are decoupled in the time integration in order to facilitate the incorporation of different turbulence models and reduce memory requirements. Both mean flow and turbulent equations are integrated in time using a linearized implicit scheme. A recently developed, fast, matrix-free implicit method, GMRES+LU-SGS, is then applied to solve the resultant system of linear equations. The spatial discretization is carried out using a hybrid finite volume and finite element method, where the finite volume approximation based on a containment dual control volume rather than the more popular median-dual control volume is used to discretize the inviscid fluxes, and the finite element approximation is used to evaluate the viscous flux terms. The developed method is used to compute a variety of turbulent flow problems in both 2D and 3D. The results obtained are in good agreement with theoretical and experimental data and indicate that the present method provides an accurate, fast, and robust algorithm for computing compressible turbulent flows on unstructured meshes.