Jason Graham

A concurrent precursor inflow method for Large Eddy Simulations and applications to finite length wind farms

In order to enable simulations of developing wind turbine array boundary layers with highly realistic inflow conditions a concurrent precursor method for Large Eddy Simulations is proposed. In this method we consider two domains simultaneously, i.e. in one domain a turbulent Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) without wind turbines is simulated in order to generate the turbulent inflow conditions for a second domain in which the wind turbines are placed. The benefit of this approach is that a) it avoids the need for large databases in which the turbulent inflow conditions are stored and the correspondingly slow I/O operations and b) we are sure that the simulations are not negatively affected by statically swept fixed inflow fields or synthetic fields lacking the proper ABL coherent structures. Sample applications are presented, in which, in agreement with field data a strong decrease of the power output of downstream wind-turbines with respect to the first row of wind-turbines is observed for perfectly aligned inflow.

Studying Lagrangian dynamics of turbulence using on-demand fluid particle tracking in a public turbulence database

from a pseudo-spectral direct numerical simulation (DNS) of forced isotropic turbulence. The flow’s Taylor-scale Reynolds number is Re� = 443, and the simulation output spans about one large-scale eddy turnover time. Besides the stored velocity and pressure fields, built-in 1st- and 2nd-order space differentiation as well as spatial and temporal interpolations are implemented on the database. The resulting 27 terabytes (TB) of data are public and can be accessed remotely through an interface based on a modern Web-services model. Users may write and execute analysis programs on their host computers, while the programs make subroutine-like calls (getFunctions) requesting desired variables (velocity and pressure and their gradients) over the network. The architecture of the database and the initial builtin functionalities are described in a previous JoT paper [2]. In the present paper, further developments of the database system are described; mainly the newly developed getPosition function. Given an initial position, integration time-step, as well as an initial and end time, the getPosition function tracks arrays of fluid particles and returns particle locations at the end of the trajectory integration time. The getPosition function is tested by comparing with trajectories computed outside of the database. It is then applied to study Lagrangian velocity structure functions as well as tensor-based Lagrangian time correlation functions. The roles of pressure Hessian and viscous terms in the evolution of the symmetric and antisymmetric parts of the velocity gradient tensor are explored by comparing the time correlations with and without these terms. Besides the getPosition function, several other updates to the database are described such as a function to access the forcing term in the DNS, a new more efficient interpolation algorithm based on partial sums, and a new Matlab interface.

A Web services accessible database of turbulent channel flow and its use for testing a new integral wall model for LES

abstract The output from a direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulent channel flow at Reτ ≈ 1000 is used to construct a publicly and Web services accessible, spatio-temporal database for this flow. The simulated channel has a size of 8πh × 2h × 3πh, where h is the channel half-height. Data are stored at 2048 × 512 × 1536 spatial grid points for a total of 4000 time samples every 5 time steps of the DNS. These cover an entire channel flow-through time, i.e. the time it takes to traverse the entire channel length 8πh at the mean velocity of the bulk flow. Users can access the database through an interface that is based on the Web services model and perform numerical experiments on the slightly over 100 terabytes (TB) DNS data on their remote platforms, such as laptops or local desktops. Additional technical details about the pressure calculation, database interpolation, and differentiation tools are provided in several appendices. As a sample application of the channel flow database, we use it to conduct an a-priori test of a recently introduced integral wall model for large eddy simulation of wall-bounded turbulent flow. The results are compared with those of the equilibrium wall model, showing the strengths of the integral wall model as compared to the equilibrium model.

Modeling turbulent flow over fractal trees using renormalized numerical simulation: Alternate formulations and numerical experiments

Simulating turbulent flows over objects characterized by hierarchies of length-scales poses special challenges associated with the cost of resolving small-scale elements. If these are treated as subgrid-scale elements, their effects on the resolved scales must be captured realistically. Most importantly, the associated drag forces must be parameterized. Prior work [S. Chester, C. Meneveau, and M. B. Parlange, “Modeling turbulent flow over fractal trees with renormalized numerical simulation,” J. Comput. Phys. 225, 427–448 (2007)10.1016/j.jcp.2006.12.009] proposed a technique called renormalized numerical simulation (RNS), which is applicable to objects that display scale-invariant geometric (fractal) properties. The idea of RNS is similar to that of the dynamic model used in large eddy simulation to determine model parameters for the subgrid-stress tensor model in the bulk of the flow. In RNS, drag forces from the resolved elements that are obtained during the simulation are re-scaled appropriately by det...

Run-time creation of the turbulent channel flow database by an HPC simulation using MPI-DB

We demonstrate a method based on MPI client-server implementation for storing the output of computations directly into the database. Our method automates the previously used inefficient ingestion process which required development of special tools for each simulation. In large-scale channel flow simulation experiments we were able to ingest the output data sets in real time, without delaying the simulation process. This was accomplished by building a Fortran interface to the MPI-DB software library and using it within the simulation code. The channel flow simulation data set will be exposed for analysis to researchers using the JHU Public Turbulence Database [7].

LES modeling and experimental measurement of boundary layer flow over multi-scale, fractal canopies

In many regions the atmospheric surface layer is affected substantially by vegetation canopies. Most previous work has focused on effects of vegetated terrain characterized by a single length scale, e.g. a single obstruction of a particular size, or canopies consisting of plants, often modeled using a prescribed leaf-area density distribution with a characteristic dominant scale. It is well known, however, that typical flow obstructions such as canopies are characterized by a wide range of length scales, branches, sub-branches, etc. Yet, it is not known how to parameterize the effects of such multi-scale objects on the lower atmospheric dynamics. This work aims to study boundary layer flow over fractal, tree-like shapes. Fractals provide convenient idealizations of the inherently multi-scale character of vegetation geometries, within certain ranges of scales. Preliminary results from a large-eddy simulation (LES) and experimental study of a fractal tree canopy in a turbulent boundary layer are reported. The LES use Renormalized Numerical Simulation (Chester et al., 2007, J. Comp. Phys.) to provide subgrid parameterizations of drag forces from unresolved small-scale branches. Experiments aiming at understanding drag forces acting on fractal trees are performed in a water tunnel facility. Drag force measurements are obtained on a set of “pre-fractal” trees containing 1-5 branch generations.