Simulation of Recirculating Flows

ME 412 Fluent Project 2

Lihan Xu, Jingwei Zhu

February 28, 2014

Instructor: Surya Pratap Vanka

1 Problem Description
Recirculating flows are often encountered within industrial equipments. Typical examples are
orifices, sudden expansions, flow in channels with baffles, flows in sloping wall combustors, etc. In
this project, we will investigate the flow in a planar channel with a baffle, as is shown in Figure 1.
H is set to be 2m. The effect of Reynolds number on the flow will be studied. To ensure a smaller
streamwise length, Reynolds number is set to be below 100. The main objectives of this project
can be summarized as:

Simulation of recirculating flows in a planar channel with a baffle.

Test the sensitivity of simulation results by varying the Reynolds number.

Improve understanding of numerical computation of fluid dynamics.

Examination of flow physics.

2 Details of the Code

Fluent 14.5 was used for the simulation of this two-dimensional recirculating flow.

Regarding the solver, we chose pressure-based type, absolute velocity formulation, steady in time.
The flow of interest is planar.

Boundary conditions were set for this simulation and they are listed in Table 1. Left zone was
set as the velocity inlet where flow enters the channel with uniform velocity Uin . Right zone was
assumed to be pressure outlet since the velocity is zero-derivative at the right end.

Regarding the solution methods, SIMPLE scheme was used for pressure-velocity coupling. Least
squares cell based gradient, standard pressure and second order upwind momentum were selected

1
 Figure 1: Flow in a planar channel with a baffle

Zone top bottom left right

Boundary condition stationary wall stationary wall velocity-inlet pressure-outlet
Zone baffle top baffle left baffle right
Boundary condition stationary wall stationary wall stationary wall

Table 1: Boundary conditions for all zones

for spatial discretization.

Initialization method was chosen to be standard and we computed from left since the air flows from
left. Reference frame was set to be relative to cell zone. Initial values for the gauge pressure and y
velocity were zero while x velocity was set to be the same as the air inlet velocity with respect to
different Reynolds number cases. Convergence criteria were all set to 1 105 and 1500 iterations
were primed to ensure that the solution converges.

3 Numerical Parameters
Air density and dynamic viscosity were assumed to be 1kg/m3 and 0.001kg/m s respectively. The
height of the channel was set to 2m and the length was set to be 24m. The baffle is located at 6m
away from the channel inlet. Its thickness was set to be 0.2m and its height 1m. The grid we used
in this project is non-uniform. It was created by dividing each boundary edge into ten parts and
maximum face size was set to be 0.2m (Figure 2). Speed of flow at the channel inlet was set to
be 0.05m, 0.025m and 0.005m in order to achieve Reynolds number of 100, 50 and 10 respectively
using the equation below:

V L
Re = (1)

2
 Figure 2: Non-uniform grid used in this project

Figure 3: Uniform grid used in this project with 0.02m maximum face size

4 Computational Times
Iterations and CPU time required to complete computation for each grid are shown in Table 2. In
addition to the non-uniform grid method we applied to this problem, we also did a uniform grid
method (Figure 3) and the computational time was also listed in Table 2 for comparison. The
maximum face size for the uniform grid is 0.02m.

Reynolds number Iterations Computational time (s)

100(non-uniform grid) 420 15.9
50(non-uniform grid) 257 10.1
10(non-uniform grid) 151 5.8
100(uniform grid) 2545 765

Table 2: Iterations and CPU time to complete computation

5 Observations of Numerical Behavior

Numerical solutions are calculated based on each mesh elements. Finer mesh usually gives rise
to more accurate results. On the other hand, finer mesh requires longer computation time and
consequently more cost. Therefore there is a trade-off between accuracy and cost.

Figure 4 shows the residual convergence process of the non-uniform grid with Reynolds number
100, 50 and 10. Figure 5 shows the residual convergence process of the uniform grid with Reynolds
number 100. As we can see, finer grid requires more iterations to complete computation and thus
longer calculation time. By comparing the contour of pressure in Figure 6(a) and Figure 7, we can
observe that as the grid gets finer, pressure distribution does not change much. Therefore, finer
and uniform grid does not necessarily bring higher accuracy, but much more computational time is
costed as the number of grid nodes increases.

3
 (a) Re=100 (non-uniform grid)

(b) Re=50 (non-uniform grid)

(c) Re=10 (non-uniform grid)

Figure 4: (a)(b)(c): Residual convergence of the non-uniform grid for three Reynolds numbers

4
 Figure 5: Residual convergence of the uniform grid with Re=100

6 Discussion of the Flow Physics

Streamlines of the recirculating flow in a planar channel with a baffle for three different Reynolds
number Re=100, Re=50 and Re=10 are shown in Figure 6. They are colored by stream function.

According to Figure 6, we observed that for Reynolds number of 100 and 50, there is one vortex
right after the baffle. However, for Reynolds number of 10, the vortex vanishes. In fact, as we play
with Reynolds number we found that the vortex diminishes as Reynolds number decreases and the
vortex vanishes at Reynolds number of 20. Away from the baffle, the streamlines are smooth and
horizontal which indicates that the velocity profile is uniform.

Line plots of pressure along the wall (on the side of the obstruction) for the three Reynolds number
cases are shown in Figure 8. For all three cases, pressure drops dramatically at the baffle area while
it drops linearly away from the baffle. Due to the presence of vortex right after the baffle, the flow
is unsteady there and pressure increases until the flow becomes steady again. Also, we can see that
pressure at the inlet (left zone) is higher when Reynolds number is higher. This is because pressure
drop is higher for higher Reynolds number due to higher velocity and outlet pressure is zero for all
three cases.

Contours of pressure for different Reynolds number are also plotted, as shown in Figure 9. It can
be observed that static pressure drops from inlet (left) to outlet (right) due to flow resistance. The
pressure drop is gradual except for places right after the baffle where pressure drop is huge. Also
notice that pressure drop in larger vortex (Figure 9(a): Re=100) is spread out and thus not as
sharp as in smaller vortex case (Figure 9(b): Re=50). Since the flow resistance depends on fluid
viscosity and velocity, higher Reynolds number has higher pressure drop which can be shown by

5
comparing the color bar range between left and right ends for the three cases.

References
[1] Surya. P. Vanka, ME 412 Fluent project manual, Spring 2014.

6
 (a) Re=100 (non-uniform grid)

(b) Re=50 (non-uniform grid)

(c) Re=10 (non-uniform grid)

Figure 6: (a)(b)(c): Streamlines of the recirculating flow for three Reynolds numbers

7
Figure 7: Streamlines of the recirculating flow for the uniform grid with Re=100

8
 (a) Re=100 (non-uniform grid)

(b) Re=50 (non-uniform grid)

(c) Re=10 (non-uniform grid)

Figure 8: (a)(b)(c): Line plots of pressure along the wall

9
 (a) Re=100 (non-uniform grid)

(b) Re=50 (non-uniform grid)

(c) Re=10 (non-uniform grid)

Figure 9: (a)(b)(c): Contours of pressure for three Reynolds numbers

10