Simulation of transition and turbulence decay in the Taylor–Green vortex

Abstract

Conventional large-eddy simulation (LES) and monotone integrated LES (MILES) are tested in emulating the dynamics of transition to turbulence in the Taylor–Green vortex (TGV). A variety of subgrid scale (SGS) models and high-resolution numerical methods are implemented in the framework of both incompressible and compressible fluid flow equations. Comparisons of the evolution of characteristic TGV integral measures are made with previously reported and new direct numerical simulation (DNS) data. The computations demonstrate that the convective numerical diffusion effects in the MILES methods can consistently capture the physics of flow transition and turbulence decay without resorting to an explicit SGS model, while providing accurate prediction of established theoretical findings for the kinetic energy dissipation, energy spectra, enstrophy and kinetic energy decay. All approaches tested provided fairly robust computational frameworks.