Turbulence Modeling
This lab focused on simulating flow through a breakout cooling hole in a turbine blade and comparing turbulence models to see how they handle flow features.
The geometry was simplified with smooth walls and no temperature gradients, which isn’t entirely realistic since material properties and thermal effects would impact the flow, but necessary given my computing power.
Using COMSOL, I ran simulations with the k-epsilon, k-omega, and L-VEL turbulence models. Each model gave different insights: the k-omega model showed a bigger boundary layer, while the L-VEL model ran way faster but wasn’t as accurate near the walls.
The results showed that air from the breakout hole stayed close to the turbine surface, which would help cool it effectively. Still, angling the hole downstream could improve this by keeping the cool air closer to the surface.
Running these simulations taught me a lot about modeling fluid flows using different turbulence models, and I enjoyed drawing conclusions from the data.