The role of turbulence transport in mechanical energy budgets

Abstract In this paper we study the role of turbulence transport on loss prediction using high fidelity scale-resolving simulations. For this purpose we use eight high-fidelity simulation datasets and compute flux of entropy and stagnation pressure transport equation budgets for all the cases. We find that under certain unsteady inflow conditions the stagnation pressure coefficient is not a reliable loss metric even at low Mach number conditions. This is due to the turbulence transport terms. The impact of these terms, typically assumed to be negligible, made stagnation pressure loss coefficient under-predict loss from 0% to over 40% when compared to entropy loss coefficient for cases considered here. This effect was most pronounced for the cases with highly unsteady inflow conditions and at low Reynolds numbers.