NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF TURBULENCE CHARACTERISTICS AND SELF-SIMILARITY IN A HIGHLY AERATED STABLE HYDRAULIC JUMP USING LARGE EDDY SIMULATION

Abstract

This work presents a numerical study of a stable hydraulic jump at Froude number 4.25 and Reynolds number 1.15×105 inside a horizontal and rectangular channel with a length of 3.2 m, a width of 0.5 m and a height of 0.4 m using large eddy simulation (LES). Classical hydraulic jump characteristics are obtained, such as conjugate depths, jump length, void fraction and velocity profiles. The hydraulic jump maximum streamwise velocity decay and shear layer spreading rate are simulated and compared with experimental data. For these parameters, numerical results demonstrate that is possible to stablish an analogy with other shear flows, such as the horizontal plane wall jet. Profiles of streamwise and vertical components of mean velocity are simulated, and self-similarity is observed for cross-sections located at the recirculation region of the jump. Self-similarity is also observed in terms of turbulent fluctuations, insofar as LES simulations indicate a high level of turbulence in the recirculation region. The simulated root mean square of streamwise velocity fluctuations, , ranges from 0.5 to 0.7 of the maximum cross-sections velocity, whereas the root mean square of vertical component of velocity fluctuations, , stays around 0.5 of the maximum cross-sections velocitiy. All validation comparisons show good agreement with the selected experimental data of Kramer and Valero (2020) and Wang (2014), presenting average deviations always lesser than 5%.