A high-resolution code for large eddy simulation of incompressible turbulent boundary layer flows

We describe a framework for large eddy simulation (LES) of incompressible turbulent boundary layers over a flat plate. This framework uses a fractional-step method with fourth-order finite difference on a staggered mesh. We present several laminar examples to establish the fourth-order accuracy and energy conservation property of the code. Furthermore, we implement a recycling method to generate turbulent inflow. We use the stretched spiral vortex subgrid-scale model and virtual wall model to simulate the turbulent boundary layer flow. We find that the case with Reθ ≈ 2.5 × 105 agrees well with available experimental measurements of wall friction, streamwise velocity profiles and turbulent intensities. We demonstrate that for cases with extremely large Reynolds numbers (Reθ = 1012), the present LES can reasonably predict the flow with a coarse mesh. The parallel implementation of the LES code demonstrates reasonable scaling on O(103) cores. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.