Assessment of scale-adaptive turbulence models for volute-type centrifugal pumps at part load operation

Unsteady three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are conducted with the open-source software OpenFOAM to assess the scale-adaptive k-ω-SST-SAS turbulence model (SAS) on a radial, volute-type centrifugal pump at part load operation which is characterized by high unsteadiness and flow separation. SAS results are compared to spatially high resolved and ensemble-averaged flow measurement data in terms of flow angle and turbulence intensity (TI) in the rotor–stator interaction region. Differences to simulation results obtained with the statistical state-of-the-art k-ω-SST turbulence model (SST) are highlighted. The flow angle is predicted with a reasonable agreement to measurement data by both, SST and SAS models. In the highly transient flow of strong rotor–stator interaction near the volute tongue, SST results show a significant overprediction of measured TI while the SAS model yields a considerably better agreement to measurement data even with a typical URANS grid resolution. A grid refinement does not further improve the agreement to measurement data. An in-depth analysis of the SAS model on separated flow, i.e., periodic hill test case, together with a large eddy simulation (LES) reference solution is performed and reveals that with successive grid refinement, in contrast to LES, the SAS model in its present form of Egorov and Menter (2008) does not resolve a successively larger portion of the turbulence spectrum, and the modeled part is not successively reduced. For that purpose, a re-calibration or even a re-formulation of the scale-adaption source term in the transport equation of the turbulent dissipation rate may be indispensable, which will be the subject of future studies.