Lattice Boltzmann simulation of flow across a staggered tube bundle array

Highlights: • Large eddy simulation of the cross-flow in a staggered tube bundle array in 3D was made. • LBM and FVM are used separately as numerical solvers and the results of each method compared with experimental data. • Effect of lattice model is studied for tube bundle flow. • Filter size effects, mesh size effects are studied for VLES turbulence model. - Abstract: The decision on the magnitude of the grid size is a crucial problem in large eddy simulations. Finer mesh requires excessive memory and causes long simulation time. Large eddy simulation model becomes inefficient when the extent of the flow geometry to be simulated with the lattice-Boltzmann method is large. Thus, in this study, it is proposed to investigate the capabilities of three turbulence models, namely, very large eddy simulation, Van Driest and Smagorinsky–Lilly. As a test case, a staggered tube bundle flow experiment is used for the validation and comparison purposes. Sensitivity analyses (including mesh and filter size) have been made. Furthermore, the effect of lattice model is investigated and it is showed that the D3Q27 and D3Q19 models do not differ significantly in lattice-Boltzmann method for this type of flow. The results of turbulence model comparisons for staggered tube bundle flow showed that very large eddy simulation is superior at low resolution. This paper might be considered as a good validation of the lattice-Boltzmann method. In turbulent flow conditions, the code successfully captures the velocity and stress profiles even if the flow is quite complicated.