Turbulent Plane Wall Jet Flows: A Numerical Benchmark

The paper investigates the turbulent flow generated by a wall jet. A numerical benchmark of six turbulence closures including two-equation and seven-equation models in their high- or low-Reynolds number formulations, is performed. The Standard k - ε , Realizable k - ε , k - ω SST, the linear and quadratic pressure-strain Reynolds Stress Models (RSM) and RSM based on ω available within Ansys Fluent 2023R2 and OpenFOAM v11 are systematically compared with reference experimental data available from the literature for the jet Reynolds number of R e j = 9,600 . Generally, the specific dissipation rate ω appears to be a better candidate than ε to determine the length scale of the turbulence for this particular configuration. Thus, the k - ω SST and RSM- ω models perform better than the others to predict the wall jet spreading rate, maximum Reynolds number or friction coefficient. The linear pressure-strain RSM fails to predict the mean streamwise velocity profile, exhibiting a large deficit in the log region. A budget analysis of the turbulence kinetic energy transport equation is also performed for the low-Reynolds number models. The intriguing behavior of the linear pressure-strain RSM is confirmed by the production term’s profile, which peaks earlier than the other models at about y + ≃ 5 . Overall, the k - ω SST model can be recommended because it offers a good trade-off between accuracy and computational efforts.