Implicit large eddy simulation of two-dimensional homogeneous turbulence using weighted compact nonlinear scheme

For the aim of computing compressible turbulent flowfield involving shock waves, an implicit large eddy simulation (LES) code has been developed based on the idea of monotonically integrated LES. We employ the weighted compact nonlinear scheme (WCNS) not only for capturing possible shock waves but also for attaining highly accurate resolution required for implicit LES. In order to show that WCNS is a proper choice for implicit LES, a two-dimensional homogeneous turbulence is first obtained by solving the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flow. We compare the inertial range in the computed energy spectrum with that obtained by the direct numerical simulation (DNS) and also those given by the different LES approaches. We then obtain the same homogeneous turbulence by solving the equations for compressible flow. It is shown that the present implicit LES can reproduce the inertial range in the energy spectrum given by DNS fairly well. A truncation of energy spectrum occurs naturally at high wavenumber limit indicating that dissipative effect is included properly in the present approach. A linear stability analysis for WCNS indicates that the third order interpolation determined in the upwind stencil introduces a large amount of numerical viscosity to stabilize the scheme, but the same interpolation makes the scheme weakly unstable for waves satisfying kΔx ≈ 1. This weak instability results in a slight increase in the energy spectrum at high wavenumber limit. In the computed result of homogeneous turbulence, a fair correlation is shown to exist between the locations where the magnitude of ∇ × ω becomes large and where the weighted combination of the third order interpolations in WCNS deviates from the optimum ratio to increase the amount of numerical viscosity. Therefore, the numerical viscosity involved in WCNS becomes large only at the locations where the subgrid-scale viscosity can arise in ordinary LES. This suggests the reason why the present implicit LES code using WCNS can resolve turbulent flowfield reasonably well.