A fourth order finite volume scheme for turbulent flow simulations in cylindrical domains

A finite volume scheme which is based on fourth order accurate central differences in the spatial directions and on a hybrid explicit/semi-implicit time stepping scheme was developed to solve the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations on cylindrical staggered grids. This includes a new fourth order accurate discretization of the velocity at the singularity of the cylindrical coordinate system and a new stability condition. The new method was applied in the direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the fully developed non-swirling turbulent flow through straight pipes with circular cross-section for the Reynolds number Re-tau = 360 based on the friction velocity mu(tau) and the pipe diameter. The obtained results are expressed in terms of statistical moments of the velocity components and are presented in comparison with those obtained with a second order accurate scheme and by measurements. It is shown that the fourth order spatial discretization leads to improved higher order statistical moments, while the first and the second order moments are more or less insensitive to the spatial discretization order. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.