Large-eddy simulations of a forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence with polymer additives

Large-eddy simulations （LES） based on the temporal approximate deconvolution model were performed for a forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence （FHIT） with polymer additives at moderate Taylor Reynolds number. Finitely extensible nonlinear elastic in the Peterlin approximation model was adopted as the constitutive equation for the filtered conformation tensor of the polymer molecules. The LES results were verified through comparisons with the direct numerical simulation results. Using the LES database of the FHIT in the Newtonian fluid and the polymer solution flows, the polymer effects on some important parameters such as strain, vorticity, drag reduction, and so forth were studied. By extracting the vortex structures and exploring the flatness factor through a high-order correlation function of velocity derivative and wavelet analysis, it can be found that the small-scale vortex structures and small-scale intermittency in the FHIT are all inhibited due to the existence of the polymers. The extended self-similarity scaling law in the polymer solution flow shows no apparent difference from that in the Newtonian fluid flow at the currently simulated ranges of Reynolds and Weissenberg numbers.

Influence of polymer additives on turbulent energy cascading in forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence studied by direct numerical simulations

Direct numerical simulations （DNS） were performed for the forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence （FHIT） with/without polymer additives in order to elaborate the characteristics of the turbulent energy cascading influenced by drag-reducing effects. The finite elastic non-linear extensibility-Peterlin model （FENE-P） was used as the conformation tensor equation for the viscoelastic polymer solution. Detailed analyses of DNS data were carried out in this paper for the turbulence scaling law and the topological dynamics of FHIT as well as the important turbulent parameters, including turbulent kinetic energy spectra, enstrophy and strain, velocity structure function, small-scale intermittency, etc. A natural and straightforward definition for the drag reduction rate was also proposed for the drag-reducing FHIT based on the decrease degree of the turbulent kinetic energy. It was found that the turbulent energy cascading in the FHIT was greatly modified by the drag-reducing polymer additives. The enstrophy and the strain fields in the FH1T of the polymer solution were remarkably weakened as compared with their Newtonian counterparts. The small-scale vortices and the small-scale intermittency were all inhibited by the viscoelastic effects in the FHIT of the polymer solution. However, the scaling law in a fashion of extended self-similarity for the FHIT of the polymer solution, within the presently simulated range of Weissenberg numbers, had no distinct differences compared with that of the Newtonian fluid case.