Numerical simulation of flow around different wall-mounted structures

ABSTRACT

The flow around two-dimensional (2D) square, triangular and semi-circular subsea protection structures mounted on a horizontal plane wall with different thicknesses of incident boundary layer flow has been investigated numerically using 2D Reynolds–averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations, with the standard high Reynolds number k–ɛ turbulence model. The normalised thickness of incident boundary layer, δ/D (where δ is the boundary layer thickness and D is the height of the structure), varies from 0.73 to 2.55. Reynolds number (Re) based on the free stream velocity and the height of the structure is 1×10⁶. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the applicability of RANS simulations for the wall mounted structures subject to high Re incoming boundary layer flow. The predicted hydrodynamic quantities are in good agreement with the published experimental data, which shows that the present model can predict the high Re boundary layer flow around the wall–mounted structures reasonably well.

KEYWORDS:

• URANS
• boundary layer flow
• subsea structures
• hydrodynamic quantities
• high Reynolds number

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been partly funded by the Research Network in Sustainable Energy at the University of Stavanger and the International Research Institute of Stavanger, Norway. This study was also supported in part with computational resources provided by the Norwegian Metacenter for Computational Science (NOTUR), under Project Number NN9372K.