Assessment of self-adapting local projection-based solvers for laminar and turbulent industrial flows

Abstract In this work, we study the performance of some local projection-based solvers in the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of laminar and turbulent flows governed by the incompressible Navier–Stokes Equations (NSE). On one side, we focus on a high-order term-by-term stabilization Finite Element (FE) method that has one level, in the sense that it is defined on a single mesh, and in which the projection-stabilized structure of standard Local Projection Stabilization (LPS) methods is replaced by an interpolation-stabilized structure. The interest of LPS methods is that they ensure a self-adapting high accuracy in laminar regions of turbulent flows, which turns to be of overall optimal high accuracy if the flow is fully laminar. On the other side, we propose a new Reduced Basis (RB) Variational Multi-Scale (VMS)-Smargorinsky turbulence model, based upon an empirical interpolation of the sub-grid eddy viscosity term. This method yields dramatical improvements of the computing time for benchmark flows. An overview about known results from the numerical analysis of the proposed methods is given, by highlighting the used mathematical tools. In the numerical study, we have considered two well known problems with applications in industry: the (3D) turbulent flow in a channel and the (2D/3D) recirculating flow in a lid-driven cavity