Abstract—Flow over a bluff body constitutes one of the most fundamental phenomena for engineering applications. Even though a cube is considered as a simple bluff body to examine with respect to the flow structure, there is more complicated flow physics around the cube than expected. Thus, a cube just like other bluff bodies is mostly used in the comparison process of numerical and experimental results to determine the more suitable turbulence model in case of undertaken problem. For this reason, in this paper, turbulence models have been employed to investigate the flow characteristics around a surface-mounted cube at Re = 3700 based on the edge length of the cube in terms of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and then compared with experimental results in the literature. Normalized and time-averaged results of velocity vector fields, streamwise and cross-stream velocity components, vorticity contours and streamline patterns have been numerically obtained by using k-ε Re-Normalization Group (RNG), k-ω Shear Stress Transport (SST) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) turbulence models. LES turbulence model has presented the best prediction of hydrodynamic characteristics for the body among the investigated turbulence models in this study. Although k-ω SST turbulence model was the second successful one after LES method among the investigated turbulence models for the estimation of flow structure around the cube, k-ε RNG turbulence model was failed to capture the flow fluctuations in the wake region of the geometry. 
 

Index Terms—bluff body, CFD, cube, turbulence model, vorticiy, wake region

Cite: Sercan Dogan, Sercan Yagmur, Ilker Goktepeli, and Muammer Ozgoren, "Assessment of Turbulence Models for Flow around a Surface-Mounted Cube," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 237-241, May 2017. DOI: 10.18178/ijmerr.6.3.237-241