Large Eddy Simulation of turbulence induced secondary flows in stationary and rotating straight square ducts

The accuracy of predicting turbulence induced secondary flows is crucially important in many industrial applications such as turbine blade internal cooling passages in a gas turbine and fuel rod bundles in a nuclear reactor. A straight square duct is popularly used to reveal the characteristic of turbulence induced secondary flows which consists of two counter rotating vortices distributed in each corner of the duct. For a rotating duct, the flow can be divided into the pressure side and the suction side. The turbulence induced secondary flows are converted to the Coriolis force driven two large circulations with a pair of additional vortices on the pressure wall due to the rotational effect. In this paper, the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of turbulence induced secondary flows in a straight square duct is performed using the ANSYS FLUENT CFD software. A dynamic kinetic energy subgrid-scale model is used to describe the three-dimensional incompressible turbulent flows in the stationary and the rotating straight square ducts. The Reynolds number based on the friction velocity and the hydraulic diameter is 300 with the various rotation numbers for the rotating cases. The flow is assumed fully developed by imposing the constant pressure gradient in the streamwise direction. For the rotating cases, the rotational axis is placed perpendicular to the streamwise direction. The simulation results on the secondary flows and the turbulent statistics are found to be in good agreement with the available Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data. Finally, the details of the Coriolis effects are discussed.