A Guide to High-Fidelity CFD for Industry

The Role of Grid Generation, HPC and Turbulence Modelling

For many companies there is a growing desire to improve the accuracy of their CFD simulations, in order to improve correlation to experiments and to allow more of their design to be undertaken in CFD.

This desire for greater accuracy has led many to look beyond traditional Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approaches for turbulence towards Large Eddy Simulation (LES). Whilst wall-resolved LES models can in general provide a much better alternative to RANS models for unsteady flows, they do so at a much higher cost, so much higher that for high-Reynolds numbers flow these costs are too great for general purpose calculations.  

Hybrid RANS-LES methods offer an attractive alternative to wall-resolved LES, where RANS methods are applied in regions of the flow which are easy to predict (attached, steady flow) and LES methods in the more challenging separated regions. These methods, if correctly applied, can provide close to LES accuracy for a greatly reduced computational cost. However, the accuracy of such approaches is heavily associated with the mesh quality & resolution, numerical schemes and the availability of HPC resources. In addition, since the first use of DES (detached eddy simulation) nearly 20 years ago, numerous alternative approaches with an array of acronyms (DES, DDES, IDDES, ZDES, SAS, WMLES, XLES) have become available.  For CFD users wishing to use high-fidelity methods, the initial challenge is understanding which approach is best suited to their application.

This seminar focussed on these high-fidelity methods and in particular the role of grid design and resolution, HPC and the formulation of the approaches themselves. Through several presentations from experts representing some of the key engineering sectors (automotive, aerospace, oil & gas, nuclear), practical examples of these methods were presented, offering attendees a chance to understand and question if these methods could be applied to their simulations.

The major CFD code vendors were also represented at the seminar, allowing attendees to see the full range of options open to their company or institution.

Presentations

oettle.pdf
Computational Aeroacoustics at Jaguar Land Rover      
Dr Nicolas Oettle, Jaguar Land Rover 

stopford.pdf
Vendor Talk: ANSYS 

mockett.pdf
State of the Art DES Methods and Perspectives for Automated Processes
Dr Charlie Mockett, CFDB Software 

mann.pdf
Vendor Talk: CD-Adapco 

hawkes.pdf
Translating Best Practice into Fit-for-Purpose Analysis: Case Studies and Examples
Dr Graham Hawkes, Frazer-Nash 

skaperdas.pdf
Vendor Talk: BETA-CAE Systems

ashton.pdf
Hybrid RANS-LES –Automatic Mesh Refinement (AMR) and HPC Considerations 
Dr Neil Ashton – University of Oxford

hieatt.pdf
Vendor Talk: FlowHD

The Unsteady Fluid Mechanics of Cyclone Separators
Dr Tom Grimble, Dyson

purwanto.pdf
Vendor Talk: Numeca

uribe.pdf
Current Use of High-Fidelity CFD at EDF Energy
Dr Juan Uribe - EDF Energy