An assessment of turbulence models for predicting the fluid flow in spiral casing of a hydraulic turbomachine using SUPG-finite element method

Numerical simulation of complex three-dimensional flow through the spiral casing has been studied using a finite element method. An explicit Eulerian velocity correction scheme has been employed to solve the Reynolds averaged Navier-stokes equations. The simulation has been performed to describe the flow in high Reynolds number (106) regime and two k-ε turbulence models (standard k-ε and RNG k-ε) have been used for computing the turbulent flow. A streamline upwind Petrov Galerkin technique has been used for spatial discretisation. The velocity field and the pressure distribution inside the spiral casing has been studied. It has been observed that very strong secondary flow is evolved on the cross-stream planes. Copyright © 2013 by ASME.