ALBERT

Description: Stationary isotropic turbulence is often studied numerically by adding a forcing term to the Navier-Stokes equation. This is usually done for the purpose of achieving higher Reynolds number and longer statistics than is possible for isotropic decaying turbulence. It is generally accepted that forcing the Navier-Stokes equation at low wave number does not influence the small scale statistics of the flow provided that there is wide separation between the largest and smallest scales. It will be shown, however, that the spectral width of the forcing has a noticeable effect on inertial range statistics. A case will be made here for using a broader form of forcing in order to compare computed isotropic stationary turbulence with (decaying) grid turbulence. It is shown that using a forcing function which is directly proportional to the velocity has physical meaning and gives results which are closer to both homogeneous and non-homogeneous turbulence. Section 1 presents a four part series of motivations for linear forcing. Section 2 puts linear forcing to a numerical test with a pseudospectral computation.

Description: Figure 1 shows a snapshot of liquid fuel spray coming out of an injector nozzle in a realistic gas-turbine combustor. Here the spray atomization was simulated using a stochastic secondary breakup model (Apte et al. 2003a) with point-particle approximation for the droplets. Very close to the injector, it is observed that the spray density is large and the droplets cannot be treated as point-particles. The volume displaced by the liquid in this region is significant and can alter the gas-phase ow and spray evolution. In order to address this issue, one can compute the dense spray regime by an Eulerian-Lagrangian technique using advanced interface tracking/level-set methods (Sussman et al. 1994; Tryggvason et al. 2001; Herrmann 2003). This, however, is computationally intensive and may not be viable in realistic complex configurations. We therefore plan to develop a methodology based on Eulerian-Lagrangian technique which will allow us to capture the essential features of primary atomization using models to capture interactions between the fluid and droplets and which can be directly applied to the standard atomization models used in practice. The numerical scheme for unstructured grids developed by Mahesh et al. (2003) for incompressible flows is modified to take into account the droplet volume fraction. The numerical framework is directly applicable to realistic combustor geometries. Our main objectives in this work are: Develop a numerical formulation based on Eulerian-Lagrangian techniques with models for interaction terms between the fluid and particles to capture the Kelvin- Helmholtz type instabilities observed during primary atomization. Validate this technique for various two-phase and particulate flows. Assess its applicability to capture primary atomization of liquid jets in conjunction with secondary atomization models.