Anisotropic, isothermal, turbulent swirling flow in a complex combustor geometry

The performance of popular second moment closure (LRR, SSG) turbulence models is assessed and compared against experimental data for anisotropic swirling flow in a cylindrical combustion chamber. In contrast to previous studies, where the dissipation anisotropy is correlated with the stress anisotropy, the benefit of approximating the former for swirling flows in terms of the mean strain and vorticity is investigated. Second moment closure models are found to predict mean and turbulent flow quantities reasonably well everywhere except near the wall. The anisotropic dissipation model is found to improve prediction of mean flow quantities near the chamber axis and acts to preserve turbulence further downstream. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.