Numerical prediction of the influence of uncertain inflow conditions in pipes by polynomial chaos

Abstract

Nearly all types of flow measurement devices installed in pipes are affected by the flow conditions at their inlet section, which can lead to measurement errors of several per cent. To evaluate the influence of uncertain inflow profiles on the flow field at different positions of the flow meter, a non-intrusive polynomial chaos approach is applied to simulations of turbulent pipe flow. This allows us to estimate the expected variations of the flow profiles as a function of the distance to the inlet of the pipe in an efficient way. The polynomial chaos approach shows reasonable convergence already for a small number of function evaluations. The results are validated by comparison with a quasi-Monte Carlo method and an exact solution, where available. The approximation error of the polynomial chaos method with 10 function evaluations is smaller than the one for the quasi-Monte Carlo method with 100 runs.