Skip to main content
NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division World-class modeling, simulation, and supercomputing in support of the NASA mission

Computational Investigations of the Turbulent Heat Flux Experiments

AMS Seminar Series

Speakers: Mark Wernet, Dennis Yoder, Mike Borghi, Seth Spiegel, Justin Pesich, and Nick Georgiadis, NASA Glenn Research Center

Presentation

Seminar Slide Deck (PDF-13.1MB)

Abstract

In the quest to gain better understanding and improve prediction accuracy of turbulence in aerodynamic and other engineering flows, one area that has not received a proportionate amount of attention is the category of flows with significant temperature variation and/or turbulent heat flux.

However, as part of the validation experiments within NASA’s Transformational Tools and Technologies (T^3) project, there have been a series of tests at NASA Glenn Research Center known as the Turbulent Heat Flux (THX) experiments, with the goal of making detailed measurements in flows with such temperature variation and importance of turbulent heat flux. In conjunction with these experiments, there has been an extensive computational fluid dynamics (CFD) effort underway to benchmark turbulent calculation methods for two of the THX experiments.

This seminar will begin with a brief summary of the experiments and the modern diagnostics that were used to make turbulent measurements of velocities and temperatures. This will be followed by discussion of the computational efforts for the 2 THX configurations. The computational approaches include Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS),Large Eddy Simulation (LES), and hybrid RANS-LES. A conjugate heat transfer solver was also examined for one of the configurations.

Biography

Photo of Mark Wernet
Mark Wernet has a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University, and works in the Optics and Photonics Branch, where he develops and applies non-intrusive measurement techniques for aerospace flows. His most recent work has been on Raman scattering and background oriented Schlieren, which were used in the experiments discussed in the seminar.

Photo of Dennis Yoder
Dennis Yoder has a Ph.D. From the University of Cincinnati and works in the Inlet and Nozzle Branch. He led Glenn’s development of the Wind-US code for many years and has focused on Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) simulations and model development.

Photo of Mike Borghi
Mike Borghi has a Ph.D. from North Carolina State University and works in the Inlet and Nozzle Branch. In recent years, he has focused on development of the Glenn Flux Reconstruction (GFR) code for high-order scale-resolving turbulent flow simulations.

Photo of Justin Pesich
Justin Pesich has a M.S. from The Ohio State University and works in the Fluid and Cryogenic Systems Branch. Most of his recent work has involved multi-phase analyses of cryogenic systems for space applications.

Photo of Nick Georgiadis
Nick Georgiadis has a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University and works in the Inlet and Nozzle Branch. He primarily works in the area of turbulent flow CFD, but conducted these experiments with Wernet, and was team leader of the THX efforts.