Adaptive Computations of Turbulent Forced Convection

This article presents an adaptive finite element method for solving incompressible turbulent flows with heat transfer. Solutions are obtained in primitive variables using a highly accurate quadratic finite element method on unstructured grids. Turbulence modeling is achieved using the k-ε model. A projection error estimator is presented that incorporates errors from various sources: velocity, temperature, pressure, and turbulence variables, including the eddy viscosity. The efficiency and reliability of the methodology are studied by solving a problem with a known analytical solution. The method is then applied to heat transfer over a backward facing step and to a heated jet. In all cases, predictions are compared to experiments.