Computation of strongly swirling confined flows with cubic eddy-viscosity turbulence models

An investigation on the predictive performance of four cubic eddy-viscosity turbulence models for two strongly swirling confined flows is presented. Comparisons of the prediction with the experiments show clearly the superiority of cubic models over the linear k-(epsilon) model. The linear k-(epsilon) model does not contain any mechanism to describe the stabilizing effects of swirling motion and as a consequence it performs poorly. Cubic models return a lower level of Reynolds stresses and the combined forced-free vortex profiles of tangential velocity close to the measurements in response to the interaction between swirl-induced curvature and stresses. However, a fully developed rotating pipe flow is too simple to contain enough flow physics, so the calibration of cubic terms is still a topic of investigation. It is shown that explicit algebraic stress models require fewer calibrations and contain more flow physics.