Developments and validation of large eddy simulation of turbulent flows in an industrial code

Large Eddy Simulation, where large scales of the flow are resolved and sub-grid scales are modelled, is well adapted to the study of turbulent flow, in which geometry and/or heat transfer effects lead to unsteady phenomena. To obtain an improved numerical tool, simulations of elementary test cases, Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulence and Turbulent Plane Channel, were clone on both structured and unstructured grids, before moving to more complex geometries. This allowed the influence of the different physical and numerical parameters to be studied separately. On structured grids, the different properties of the numerical methods corresponding to our problem were identified, a new sub-grid model was elaborated and several laws of the wall tested: for this discretization, our numerical tool is yet validated. On unstructured grids, the construction of numerical methods with the same properties as on the structured grids is harder, especially for the convection scheme: several numerical schemes were tested, and sub-grid models and laws of the wall were adapted to unstructured grids. Simulations of the same elementary tests were clone: the results are relatively satisfactorily, even if they are not so good as the one obtained in structured grids, most probably because the numerical methods chosen cannot perfectly isolate the effects between the convection scheme, physical modelling and the mesh chosen. This work is the first stage towards the development of a practical Large Eddy Simulation tool for unstructured grid. (author)