NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF A LOW-REYNOLDS-NUMBER TURBULENT WAKE BEHIND A FLAT-PLATE

A numerical simulation of a plane turbulent wake at a very low Reynolds number has been performed using finite volume methods. The wake was produced by allowing two turbulent boundary layers, simulated separately in advance, to interact downstream of the trailing edge of a thin flat plate. A number of innovative numerical techniques were required in the simulation, such as the provision of fully turbulent time-dependent inflow data from a separate simulation, advective outflow boundary conditions and the approximate representation of an internal solid surface by a method which is computationally efficient. The resulting simulation successfully reproduced many of the statistical properties of the turbulent near-wake flow at low Reynolds number.