SINOPSIS

Comparisons between large eddy simulation (LES) and velocity measurements have been performed for a turbulent flow in a real shrouded rotor-stator configuration. The LES model is based on Spectral Vanishing Viscosity (SVV). The key particularity of this model is that the SVV is active only at the short length scales, a feature which is required to accurately capture the complexity of the flow. Thus, numerical results are shown to compare very favourably with experimental measurements at rotational Reynolds numbers Re = Ω.b²/v = 10⁶ in an annular cavity of radius ratio s(= a/b) = 0.286 and of aspect ratio G = (b − a)/h = 5, where a and b are respectively the inner and outer radii of the rotating disk and h is the inter-disk spacing. The spectral vanishing viscosity, first introduced by E. Tadmor for the inviscid Burgers equation [SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 26, 30 (1989)], is incorporated into the cylindrical Navier-Stokes equations written in velocity pressure formulation. The second-order operator involved by the SVV-method is implemented in a Chebyshev-collocation Fourier-Galerkin pseudo-spectral code. As far as the authors are aware, LES of fully turbulent flow in an actual shrouded rotor-stator cavity have not been performed before.