Large eddy simulation based on stabilized finite element method for the analysis of wind field around spatial structure

Abstract

This paper presents a stabilized finite element formulation for large eddy simulation to predict the turbulent flow with high Reynolds number, which can be applied for the simulation of wind field and wind pressure distribution around shell and spatial structures. The Smagorinsky sub-grid scale model is applied for the governing equations of incompressible viscous flow and the streamline upwind Petrov-Galerkin (SUPG) weak formulation is adopted for momentum equation. For the spatial discretization, the same order iso-parametric interpolation process for the flow¿s velocity and pressure is introduced, and for temporal discretization, the explicit three-step finite element method is applied. All of those are adopted to overcome the instabilities of the FEM in solving the turbulent flow with high Reynolds number. For the numerical examples, we apply a lid driven flow of Re=106 in a square cavity and a flow past square cylinder at Re=22 000 with a moderate number of elements. Numerical results show that the present approach(that is, the combination of FEM with SUPG and the explicit three-step finite element method) can effectively suppress the computational instabilities for flow velocities and pressure fields, and is an efficient and reliable numerical procedure for solving turbulent flows with high Reynolds number.