wallShearStress, wallGradU are inconsistent
 

Hello all,

I just tried to calculate the wallShearStress entries of my case from wallGradU (dU/dy), rho (all found using OF postprocessors and sample utility), and nu (from transportProperties). Since tau = mu * (dU/dy) = rho * nu * (dU/dy), I figure that tau / (rho * dU/dy) should be constant, however this is not the case.

Can anyone explain why there is a discrepancy? I feel like I should be able to calculate wallShearStress somehow using its constituent parameters. This is important to me since the wallShearStress utility does not work for laminar flow and I want to compare the forces on an airfoil in laminar and turbulent flow for the same case.

Thanks in advance,
Dan

Issue resolved - rather, issues:

1) for compressible cases, you must run "wallShearSress -compressible" with that flag in place. The only way to know to do this is to read the code for the wallShearStress utility. Suggestion: the utility should be able to distinguish between compressible and incompressible cases by itself, or force the user to use a flag for compressible and incompressible, to make this utility more user friendly.

2) by looking at the turbulence model (kwSST) code and the wallShearStress code, I found that OF calculates wallShearStress as follows:
tau_w = -(mu + mut) * (wallGradU)

When I made that change, the data matched.

Therefore, to calculate laminar, tau_w = -mu * (wallGradU) since mut = 0.

May others learn from my mistakes!

To continue this monologue, I noticed that when running wallShearStress with and without the compressible flag on the same case, the results differed by a factor of rho yet the dimensions in both wallShearStress files were the same. This suggests that the equation for tau_w (wallShearStress) changes as follows for compressible/incompressible cases:

wallShearStress:


wallShearStress -compressible:


Therefore, if I understand correctly:


Which would not be a problem if the dimensions in both cases did not read the same (m2/s2): This looks to me like a bug. Thoughts?

Regards,
Daniel

Greetings Daniel,

Sorry for the (very) late reply, but only now did I trip over your thread, while looking for the exact answer you've given in post #2 ;)

The explanation to your latest question is simple: OpenFOAM uses a simplification of omitting rho to save up some CPU cycles in pointless multiplications by rho, when handling incompressible simulations... at least in most cases. This should also increase accuracy, since with each multiplication, there is always an error involved, no matter how small.

This to say that wallShearStress in incompressible mode does what it can with the data we provide it, namely since rho was not provided, it cannot multiply by an unknown rho ;)
I also explained this with other details a few months ago (which was a few months after your last post), on this post: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...tml#post509408 post #6

Best regards,
Bruno

Just a side note while calculating yPlus
 

If you are not happy with the yplusRAS utility provided by OpenFOAM which has it's problems documented here Official OpenFOAM and here http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...earstress.html, you might want to be aware of the fact that in the equation
tau_w = -(mu + mut) * (wallGradU)
mut is almost 0 for y+<3, so it can be ignored. This means that you will not have to call the mut, but just the
tau_w= mu*wallGradU, will do the trick.

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I feel this would not work for the wall functions. Does the mut automatically index the corrected mut on the patch?