Synthetic inflow boundary conditions for wall bounded flows

The present paper summarizes the research conducted at the University of Manchester over the course of the Desider project on methods of generation of synthetic turbulence. A random procedure, referred to as the Synthetic Eddy Method (SEM), based on the classical view of turbulence as a superposition of coherent structures was developed and compared with other methods of generation of inflow boundary conditions for LES, for different types of wall bounded flows. Synthetic inflow generation methods always show a transition region downstream of the inlet until the turbulence recovers an equilibrium state. The sensitivity of this transition region to variations in the synthetic inflow turbulence energy, length scale and time scale is studied herein with applications to hybrid RANS-LES methods in mind, as RANS results cannot be expected to provide accurate values for these scales to the LES region. A parameterization of the SEM suitable for hybrid RANS-LES simulations is proposed and tested on hybrid RANS-LES simulations of several wall bounded flows, with an emphasis on the flat plat boundary layer.