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Large-Eddy Simulation of Stably-Stratified Flow Over a Steep Hill

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Abstract

Large-eddy simulation (LES) is used to simulate stably-stratified turbulent boundary-layer flow over a steep two-dimensional hill. To parametrise the subgrid-scale (SGS) fluxes of heat and momentum, three different types of SGS models are tested: (a) the Smagorinsky model, (b) the Lagrangian dynamic model, and (c) the scale-dependent Lagrangian dynamic model (Stoll and Porté-Agel, Water Resour Res 2006, doi:10.1029/2005WR003989). Simulation results obtained with the different models are compared with data from wind-tunnel experiments conducted at the Environmental Flow Research Laboratory (EnFlo), University of Surrey, U.K. (Ross et al., Boundary-Layer Meteorol 113:427–459, 2004). It is found that, in this stably-stratified boundary-layer flow simulation, the scale-dependent Lagrangian dynamic model is able to account for the scale dependence of the eddy-viscosity and eddy-diffusivity model coefficients associated with flow anisotropy in flow regions with large mean shear and/or strong flow stratification. As a result, simulations using this tuning-free model lead to turbulence statistics that are more realistic than those obtained with the other two models.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota, 2 Third Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN, 55414, USA

    Feng Wan & Fernando Porté-Agel

  2. School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Fernando Porté-Agel

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  1. Feng Wan
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  2. Fernando Porté-Agel
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Correspondence to Fernando Porté-Agel.

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Wan, F., Porté-Agel, F. Large-Eddy Simulation of Stably-Stratified Flow Over a Steep Hill. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 138, 367–384 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-010-9562-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-010-9562-4

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