Numerical schemes for large eddy simulation

This thesis is devoted to the simulation of incompressible or low Mach turbulent flows, for nuclear safety applications. In particular, we focus on the development and analysis of performing numerical schemes for the Large Eddy Simulation technique. These schemes are based on fractional step methods of pressure correction type and on nonconforming low degree finite elements. Two requirements seems essential to build such schemes, namely a control of kinetic energy and the accuracy for convection dominated flows. Concerning the time marching algorithm, we propose a Crank-Nicolson like scheme for which we prove a kinetic energy control. This scheme has the advantage to be numerically low dissipative (numerical dissipation residual is second order in time). Concerning the low accuracy of the Rannacher-Turek discretization, two approaches are investigated in this work. The first one consists in building a penalized scheme constraining the velocity degrees of freedom tangent to the faces to be written as a linear combination of the normal ones. The second approach relies on the enrichment of the pressure approximation discrete space. Finally, various numerical tests are presented in both two and three dimensions and for general meshes, to illustrate the capacity of the schemes and compare theoretical and experimental results. (author)