A Bypass Transition Model Based on the Intermittency Function

An intermittency model that is formulated in local variables is proposed for representing bypass transition in Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) computations. No external data correlation is used to fix transition. Transition is initiated by diffusion, and a source term carries it to completion. A sink term is created to predict the laminar region before transition, then it vanishes in the turbulent region. Both the source and sink are functions of a wall-distance Reynolds number and turbulence scale. A modification is introduced to predict transition in separated boundary layers. The transition model is incorporated with the k−ω RANS model. The present model is implemented into a general purpose, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The model is validated with several test cases. Decent agreement with the available data is observed in a range of flows.