Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “effective turbulence”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Freestream turbulence effects on unsteady wind turbine loads and wakes: An IDDES study

We investigate numerically the effects of freestream turbulence on the unsteady aerodynamics and wakes of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Phase VI wind turbine rotor for increasing wind speed. Turbulence is modeled using the Improved Delayed Detached-Eddy Simulation (IDDES) method. As a first step, a detailed mesh resolution study is conducted with the decaying freestream turbulence model at turbulence intensity of 0.5%. Our blade-resolved IDDES simulations show that grid-independent average torque and thrust results can be achieved with relatively coarse meshes, whereas dramatically higher mesh resolution is required for grid-independent results for power spectral densities of thrust force, especially in the deep-stall regime. Comparing the loads with the Shear-Stress Transport model demonstrates the superiority of IDDES in predicting massively separated flows. The aerodynamic performance and wake predictions with the decaying freestream turbulence model are compared with the synthetic freestream turbulence model. Both models predict nearly the same loads, spectral energy content, and wake characteristics. The properties of both the near- and far-wake regions are then examined. Furthermore, we show that separated boundary layers accelerate turbulent mixing and entrainment of the external flow, which results in faster wake recovery. The effect of increasing turbulence intensity to 6% is investigated using the synthetic freestream turbulence model. In contrast with the fully attached boundary layer, higher freestream turbulence in deep stall does not significantly affect the loads and vortex-shedding characteristics. However, the turbulent mixing in the wake is enhanced, which further hastens the recovery of the self-similar velocity profile. In general, increasing the wind speed at high turbulence intensity shifts the recovery farther upstream and increases the wake width.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Difference in load predictions obtained with effective turbulence vs. a dynamic wake meandering modeling approach

Abstract. According to the international standard for wind turbine design, the effects of wind turbine wakes on structural loads can be considered in two ways: (1) by augmenting the ambient turbulence levels with the effective turbulence model (EFF) and then calculating the resulting loads and (2) by performing dynamic wake meandering (DWM) simulations, which compute wake effects and loads for all turbines on a farm at once. There is no definitive answer in scientific literature as to the consequences of choosing one model over the other, but the two approaches are unarguably very different. The work presented here expounds on these differences and investigates to what extent they affect the simulated structural loads. We consider an idealized 4×4 rectangular array of National Renewable Energy Laboratory 5 MW wind turbines with a spacing of 5 by 8 rotor diameters and three wind speed scenarios at high ambient turbulence. Load simulations are performed in OpenFAST with EFF and in FAST.Farm with the DWM implementation. We compare ambient turbulence, wind farm turbulence, and loads between both approaches. When omnidirectional results are compared, EFF wind farm turbulence intensity is consistently higher by 0.2 % (above-rated wind speed) to 2.7 % (below-rated wind speed). However, for certain wind directions, the EFF turbulence can be lower than FAST.Farm by almost 9 %. Wind speeds within the farm were found to differ by up to 3 m s−1 due to the lack of wake deficits in the EFF approach, leading to longer tails toward low values in the FAST.Farm mean load distributions. Consistent with the turbulence results, the median EFF load standard deviations are also consistently higher, by a maximum of 20 % and 17 % for blade-root out-of-plane and tower-base fore-aft moments, respectively.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Are turbulence effects on droplet collision–coalescence a key to understanding observed rain formation in clouds?

Rain formation is a critical factor governing the lifecycle and radiative forcing of clouds and therefore it is a key element of weather and climate. Cloud microphysics–turbulence interactions occur across a wide range of scales and are challenging to represent in atmospheric models with limited resolution. Based on past experiments and idealized numerical simulations, it has been postulated that cloud turbulence accelerates rain formation by enhancing drop collision–coalescence. We provide substantial evidence for significant impacts of turbulence on the evolution of cloud droplet size distributions and rain formation by comparing high-resolution observations of cumulus congestus clouds with state-of-the-art large-eddy simulations coupled with a Lagrangian particle-based microphysics scheme. Turbulent coalescence must be included in the model to accurately represent the observed drop size distributions, especially for drizzle drop sizes at lower heights in the cloud. Turbulence causes earlier rain formation and greater rain accumulation compared to simulations with gravitational coalescence only. The observed rain size distribution tail just above cloud base follows a power law scaling that deviates from theoretical scalings considering either a purely gravitation collision kernel or a turbulent kernel neglecting droplet inertial effects, providing additional evidence for turbulent coalescence in clouds. In contrast, large aerosols acting as cloud condensation nuclei (“giant CCN”) do not significantly impact rain formation owing to their long timescale to reach equilibrium wet size relative to the lifetime of rising cumulus thermals. Overall, turbulent drop coalescence exerts a dominant influence on rain initiation in warm cumulus clouds, with limited impacts of giant CCN.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

PARTICLE RESOLVED DNS STUDY OF TURBULENCE EFFECTS ON HYPORHEIC MIXING IN RANDOMLY PACKED SEDIMENT BEDS

Pore-resolved direct numerical simulations (DNS) are used to investigate the interactions between stream-water flow turbulence and groundwater flow through a porous sediment bed in the hyporheic zone. Two permeability Reynolds numbers (2.56 and 5.17), representative of aquatic systems and representing ratio of permeability to viscous length scales, were simulated to understand its influence on the momentum exchange at the sediment-water interface (SWI). A doubleaveraging methodology is used to compute the Reynolds stresses, form-induced stresses, and pressure fluctuations. It is observed that both shear layer and turbulent shear stress penetration increases with ReK. Reynolds and form-induced bed-normal stresses increase with ReK. The peak values of the form-induced stresses for the lower (2.56) and higher (5.17) ReK happen within the top layer of the sediment bed. The sum of turbulent and form-induced pressure fluctuations, analyzed at their respective zero-displacement planes, are statistically similar and can be well approximated by a t location-scale distribution fit providing with a model that could potentially be used to impose boundary conditions at the SWI in reach scale simulations.

Karra, Shashank↗
DOE OSTI2025

Turbulent burning velocity of lean premixed hydrogen/air flames at engine conditions: Effects of turbulence intensity and length scale

For turbulent lean premixed hydrogen flames with strong thermodiffusively instabilities, most previous studies have focused on the influence of turbulence intensity, whereas the role of turbulence length scale is less well understood. Here, this study addresses this gap by conducting direct numerical simulations (DNS) of statistically planar turbulent premixed flames for a lean (ϕ=0.35) hydrogen/air mixture under independently varied turbulence intensity (u') and length scale (l T ) at engine-relevant thermodynamics conditions. Results show that as u' increases, the flame front becomes increasingly wrinkled, forming smaller cellular structures. In contrast, l T variations do not significantly alter the size of these structures. For the turbulent burning velocity (S T ), the normalized S T (i.e., S T /S L , where S L is the laminar flame speed) increases linearly with u', driven by both enhanced flame surface wrinkling (i.e., increased A T /A L ) and enhanced local burning rate (i.e., increased I 0 ). However, increasing l T reduces I 0 , despite a continued increase in A T /A L , resulting in only a marginal increase in S T /S L . To reveal the underlying mechanisms, especially the decreasing trend of I 0 with l T , local flame dynamics analyses are performed. It is found that as l T increases, the interaction between thermodiffusive effects and turbulence weakens due to the reduced tangential strain rate, while the flame curvature remains largely unchanged. This suppresses local reactivity enhancement and thus decreases I 0 , In contrast, an increase in u' enhances the interaction by amplifying both curvature fluctuation and tangential strain rate, leading to increased local reactivity (increased I 0 ). Finally, based on the DNS data, several new scaling models are proposed for the three global properties, S T /S L , A T /A L , and I 0 , and showed improvements compared to existing models. These findings provide new insights into the flame-turbulence interactions in thermodiffusively unstable hydrogen flames. The DNS dataset is also useful for the development of turbulent combustion models applicable to practical engine simulations.

Engine-relevant condition↗
DOE OSTI2020

Effects of Turbulence and Temperature Fluctuations on Knock Development in an Ethanol/Air Mixture

The effects of turbulence on knock development and intensity for a thermally inhomogeneous stoichiometric ethanol/air mixture at a representative end-gas autoignition condition in internal combustion engines are investigated using direct numerical simulations with a skeletal reaction mechanism. Two- and three-dimensional simulations are performed by varying the most energetic length scale of temperature, \(l_T\) , and its relative ratio with the most energetic length scale of turbulence, \(l_T/l_e\) , together with two different levels of the turbulent velocity fluctuation, \(u'\) . It is found that \(l_T\) / \(l_e\) and the ratio of ignition delay time to eddy-turnover time, \(\tau _{ig}/\tau _t\) , are the key parameters that control the detonation development. An increase in either \(l_T\) or \(l_e\) enhances the detonation propensity by allowing a longer run-up distance for the detonation development. The characteristic length scale of the temperature field, \(l_T\) , is significantly modified by high turbulence intensity achieved by a large \(l_e\) and \(u'\) . The intense turbulence mixing effectively distributes the initial temperature field to broader scales to support the developing detonation waves, thereby increasing the likelihood of the detonation formation. On the contrary, high turbulence intensity with a short mixing time scale, achieved by a small \(l_e\) and a large \(u'\) , reduces the super-knock intensity attributed to the finer broken-up structures of detonation waves. Either \(\tau _{ig}/\tau _t\) less than unity or \(l_e = l_T\) even with a large \(u'\) is found to have no significant effect on super-knock mitigation. Finally, high turbulent intensity may induce high-pressure spikes comparable to the von Neumann spike. Overall, increased temperature and pressure by combustion heating, noticeably after the peak of heat release rate, significantly enhance the collision and interaction of multiple emerging autoignition fronts near the ending combustion process, resulting in localized high-pressure spikes.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

The Effects of Turbulence on Heliosheath Ions and Implications for Energetic Neutral Atoms

The distribution of ions in the heliosheath—the region between the heliospheric termination shock and the heliopause—is important for understanding remote observations of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs). The ion distributions were estimated previously based on hybrid simulations of the heating and evolution of solar wind and interstellar pickup ions across the solar wind termination shock, but these estimates only provide the distributions near the shock. In this work, we use self-consistent hybrid kinetic simulations to investigate the effects of turbulence on ion distributions in the heliosheath. The simulations are compared against Voyager observations, constraining the feasible amplitude and compressibility of turbulence. We find that the heating due to turbulent dissipation can lead to a significant increase in the temperature of thermal solar wind ions. Both turbulent velocity fluctuations and the heating of solar wind ions increase the charge-exchange source for ENAs at low energies (around 100 eV), where current ENA models underpredict observations by more than an order of magnitude. However, the effects of turbulence are likely not strong enough to fully explain these discrepancies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Turbulence spreading effects on the ELM size and SOL width

BOUT++ turbulence simulations were performed to investigate the impact of turbulence spreading on the edge localized mode (ELM) size and divertor heat flux width (λ q ) broadening in small ELM regimes. Here, this study is motivated by EAST experiments. BOUT++ linear simulations of a pedestal radial electric field (E r ) scan show that the dominant toroidal number mode (n) shifts from high-n to low-n, with a narrow mode spectrum, and the maximum linear growth rate increases as the pedestal E r well deepens. The nonlinear simulations show that as the net E × B pedestal flow increases, the pressure fluctuation level and its inward penetration beyond the top of the pedestal both increase. This leads to a transition from small ELMs to large ELMs. Both inward and outward turbulence spreading are sensitive to the scrape-off-layer (SOL) plasma profiles. The inward turbulence spreading increases for the steep SOL profiles, leading to increasing pedestal energy loss in the small ELM regime. The SOL width (λ q ) is significantly broadened progressing from the ELM-free to small ELM regime, due to the onset of strong radial turbulent transport. The extent of the SOL width (λ q ) broadening depends strongly on outward turbulence spreading. The fluctuation energy intensity flux Γ ε at the separatrix can be enhanced by increasing either pedestal E r flow shear or local SOL pressure gradient. The λ q is broadened as the fluctuation energy intensity flux Γ ε at the last close flux surface (LCFS) increases. Local SOL E × B flow shear will restrain outward turbulence spreading and the associated heat flux width broadening. Operating in H-mode with small ELMs has the potential to solve two critical problems: reducing the ELM size and broadening the SOL width.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Magnetic geometry effects on turbulent density fluctuations in Wendelstein 7-X

Line-integrated density fluctuation measurements from the core of the optimised stellarator Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) are studied in the context of magnetic field geometry changes. The amplitude as well as the spectral distribution of fluctuations is affected by varying the magnetic field configuration. Weaker turbulent fluctuations are observed in configurations with higher rotational transform and lower magnetic mirror depth. Simulations with the gyrokinetic codes stella and GENE-3D are used to investigate the role of magnetic geometry for the experimental observations. The stabilising effect of the high rational transform configuration is reproduced by simulations and can be associated with stronger shaping of the magnetic field. This leads to increased finite Larmor radius and local shear effects, which limit the toroidal extent of ion temperature gradient (ITG) modes. For W7-X configurations with higher magnetic mirror depth, gyrokinetic theory and simulations predict weaker fluctuations, since they are closer to having the maximum-J property, which has a stabilising effect on trapped-electron mode and ITG. The opposite trend is observed experimentally, which can therefore not be explained by geometry effects on turbulence alone.

Wendelstein-7X↗
DOE OSTI2023

Observational Investigation of the Effect of Turbulence on Microphysics and Precipitation in Warm Marine Boundary Layer Clouds

Abstract Turbulence is omnipresent in the marine boundary layer (MBL) and several mechanisms have been proposed regarding its role on MBL cloud microphysics. In particular, past modeling studies suggested that increasing turbulence broaden the droplet size distribution (DSD) and leads to precipitation initiation, this suggested relationship has not been evaluated yet using long‐term observations. Here, comprehensive retrievals from long‐term ground‐based observations are used to explore the impact of turbulence on microphysics and precipitation in drizzling MBL clouds. Our analysis supports that broader DSD and larger droplets are observed with strong turbulence, but interestingly, the precipitation is reduced instead of being enhanced. This suppression mechanism is mainly due to the entrainment and mixing process in which the entrained dry air evaporates cloud water. This study provides observational evidence to show the complex effect of turbulence on MBL cloud properties and implies the potential influence of turbulence on the clouds lifetime.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Analysis of real-fluid thermodynamic effects on turbulent statistics in transcritical channel flows

Wall-bounded turbulence at high-pressure transcritical conditions with intense density fluctuations are encountered in many technical applications. In this study, we analyze the turbulent energy transport in transcritical channel flows specifically focusing on dissipation rate, turbulent kinetic energy budgets, heat fluxes, and momentum-fluctuation statistics; results from this analysis are used to guide the development of turbulent scaling laws. Furthermore, we find that the dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy is dominated by the enstrophy in the logarithmic layer, and the fluctuating viscosity results in the reduced tilting of the vortical structures and the attenuation of streamwise vorticity in the near-wall layer; the fluctuating viscosity attenuates the dissipation rate by reducing the shear strain and the enstrophy production. Local equilibrium of the turbulent kinetic energy exists in the logarithmic layer. We show that the real-fluid thermodynamic effects significantly change the turbulent heat flux correlated with the sweep and the ejection events; the density changes alter the turbulent transport and result in noticeable magnitudes of density-fluctuation-related momentum-fluctuation statistics. From these results, scaling laws for the turbulent length scales and turbulent kinetic energy budgets are proposed, thereby contributing to improvement of the wall models in large-eddy simulations and Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Investigation of the effects of turbulence modeling on the prediction of compression-ignition combustion unsteadiness

Adverse effects of global warming due to the greenhouse gas emissions is changing the actual paradigm for the use energy resources. In the absence of a mid-term solution for reducing these emissions in transportation, internal combustion (IC) engines are going to coexist in the social spheres in the foreseeable future. Therefore, the study of other IC engine-related problems remains relevant to ensuring the health of the society. In this investigation, a numerical methodology for comprehensive understanding of Noise, Vibration and Harshness in internal combustion engines is proposed. Due to its inherent complexity and lack of awareness, the main objective is to evaluate the impact of the turbulence modeling framework on the in-cylinder acoustic field recreation. Modal decomposition methods have been applied to isolate the coherent flow structures and to analyze how they change with the turbulence approach. Results demonstrate that the choice of the turbulence model is a critical aspect for noise modeling. Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes schemes predict a raw estimation of the internal acoustic field with the added value of being computationally less expensive. However, the use of more complex turbulence approaches such us large eddy simulation offers an accurate prediction of the acoustic structures and their cyclic dispersion.

Broatch, A.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Relativistic wind farm effect: Possibly turbulent flow of a charged, massless relativistic fluid in graphene

At low Reynolds numbers, the wind flow in the wake of a single wind turbine is generally not turbulent. However, turbines in wind farms affect each other's wakes so that a turbulent flow can arise. In the present work, an analog of this effect for the massless charge carrier flow around obstacles in graphene is outlined. We use a relativistic hydrodynamic simulation to analyze the flow in a sample containing impurities. Depending on the density of impurities in the sample, we indeed find evidence for potentially turbulent flow and discuss experimental consequences.

Watson, Mark (ORCID:0000000258959949)↗
DOE OSTI2023

Effects of turbulent diffusion and back-reaction on the dust distribution around two resonant planets

In evolved and dusty circumstellar discs, two planets with masses comparable to Jupiter and Saturn that migrate outwards while maintaining an orbital resonance can produce distinctive features in the dust distribution. Dust accumulates at the outer edge of the common gas gap, which behaves as a dust trap, where the local dust concentration is significantly enhanced by the planets’ outward motion. Concurrently, an expanding cavity forms in the dust distribution inside the planets’ orbits, because dust does not filter through the common gaseous gap and grain depletion in the region continues via inward drifting. There is no cavity in the gas distribution because gas can filter through the gap, although ongoing gas accretion on the planets can reduce the gas density in the inner disc. Such behaviour was demonstrated by means of simulations neglecting the effects of dust diffusion due to turbulence and of dust backreaction on the gas. Both effects may alter the formation of the dust peak at the gap outer edge and of the inner dust cavity, by letting grains filter through the dust trap. We performed high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations of the coupled evolution of gas and dust species, the latter treated as pressureless fluids, in the presence of two giant planets. We show that diffusion and backreaction can change some morphological aspects of the dust distribution but do not alter some main features, such as the outer peak and the expanding inner cavity. Furthermore, these findings are confirmed for different parametrizations of gas viscosity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗