A high-order Discontinuous Galerkin solver for unsteady incompressible turbulent flows

In this work we investigate the use of adaptive linearly implicit Rosenbrock-type Runge-Kutta and Explicit Singly Diagonally Implicit Runge-Kutta schemes to integrate in time high-order Discontinuous Galerkin space discretizations of the incompressible Navier-Stokes (INS) and Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations. The objective of this activity is to assess the efficiency and accuracy of the considered schemes coupled with a time-step adaptation technique for incompressible URANS simulations. The schemes have been first investigated for the computation of the laminar travelling waves and of the turbulent flow around a circular cylinder at a Reynolds number Re = 5 x 10(4), verifying the convergence order, a simple relation to set the system tolerance starting from the tolerance of the adaptation strategy, and their computational efficiency. Finally, the best scheme resulting from our analysis has been applied to the URANS simulation of the flow through a vertical axis wind turbine, comparing the results with CFD and experimental data available in literature. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.