A Parallel Overset Grid High-Order Flow Solver for Large Eddy Simulation

This work describes the development and validation of a parallel high-order compact finite difference Navier–Stokes solver for application to large-eddy simulation (LES) and direct numerical simulation. The implicit solver can employ up to sixth-order spatial formulations and tenth-order filtering. The parallelization of the solver is founded on the overset grid technique. LES were then performed for turbulent channel flow with Reynolds numbers ranging from Re _τ=180 to 590, and flow past a circular cylinder with a transitional wake at Re _D =3900. The channel flow solutions were obtained using both an implicit LES (ILES) approach and a dynamic sub-grid scale model. The ILES method obtained virtually identical solutions at half the computational cost. The original vector and new parallel solvers produce indistinguishable mean flow solutions for the circular cylinder. Repeating the cylinder simulation on a much finer mesh resulted in significantly better agreement with experimental data in the near wake than the coarse grid solution and other previous numerical studies.