Evaluation of Second-and High-Order Solvers in Wall-Resolved Large-Eddy Simulation

In the context of wall-resolved industrial large-eddy simulation, a comparison is made between a high-order flux reconstruction (FR)/correction procedure via reconstruction (CPR) solver (hpMusic) with p refinement and a commercial second-order finite volume solver (Fluent) with mesh refinement (h refinement). A well-known benchmark problem in turbomachinery is employed: transonic flow over a von Karman Institute high-pressure turbine vane at a Reynolds number of 1.16 x 10(6). All of the meshes originated from the same coarse mesh, a mixed unstructured mesh, generated through global uniform refinement for the purpose of evaluating the solution dependence on mesh and polynomial order. Because the meshes used for hpMusic and Fluent belong to the same family, useful information about solution accuracy and efficiency can be obtained. Detailed comparisons are made in mean surface loading, heat transfer, power spectral density of pressure at selected monitor points, mean boundary-layer velocity and total temperature profiles, and wake loss. Numerical results are compared with experimental data, when available. The high-order FR/CPR method is shown to achieve a higher accuracy at a reduced cost than the second-order finite volume method.