A multi-grid framework for the extraction of large-scale vortices in Large-Eddy Simulation

The analysis of large-scale vortices from highly refined unsteady simulations becomes challenging as the mesh resolution increases. Beyond the large amount of data that needs to be processed, classical vortex visualization techniques based on invariants of the velocity gradient tensor fail in extracting the large-scale vortices as the velocity gradient tensor magnitude is greater for small turbulent eddies than for energy-containing vortices. This problem is even more important in highly-resolved simulations with a broad range of eddies. The methodology presented here is a geometric multi-grid high-order filtering (MGHOF) framework for on-line analysis of high-fidelity simulations. This approach relies on high-order implicit filters and enables the extraction of large-scale features from Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) on massive and distributed unstructured grids at a reduced cost. The MGHOF framework is first described and validated, then the methodology is applied to a 3D turbulent plane jet and to the LES of a 3D low-Mach number turbine blade with various mesh sizes, ranging from a few million to a few billion tetrahedra. In the latter case, the MGHOF enables to perform the dynamic mode decomposition of the velocity and temperature fields for the finer grid resolution. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.