The Use of Wall Functions for Simulating the Turbulent Thermal Boundary Layer

Abstract

An important problem in the numerical simulation of turbulent heat exchange in fluids is accurate prediction of hydrodynamic characteristics of the flow in the boundary layer, which requires a fine grid near rigid surfaces. In applications, it is not always possible to have a fine grid and the use of a coarser grid results in significant loss of accuracy. A well-known approach to improving the accuracy of the numerical simulation of the boundary layer is the use of universal wall functions for computing the friction and thermal flux. In this paper, we consider the known wall functions for computing the thermal flux. The accuracy of these functions in problems of turbulent nonisothermal flow of fluid is studied. These are the flow in a plane channel, Couette flow, and flow along a heated plate. Each of these problems is solved on grids with various near wall resolutions. The results of solving these problems provide a basis for estimating the accuracy of the wall functions used for solving them. It is shown that the wall functions considered in this study yield nonmonotonic convergence of the results as the grid is refined.