Applying Ensemble Kalman Filter to Transonic Flows Through a Two-Dimensional Turbine Cascade

Turbulence is one of the most important phenomena in fluid dynamics. Large eddy simulation (LES) generally allows us to analyze smaller eddies than when using simulations based on unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations (URANS). In addition, the numerical solutions of LES show good agreements with experiments and numerical solutions based on direct numerical simulation. URANS simulations are, however, frequently used in academia and industry because LES computations are much more expensive compared with URANS simulations. In this investigation, an optimization of unsolved coefficients of the k–x two equations model is performed on the transonic flow around T106A low-pressure turbine cascade to improve the accuracy of turbulence prediction with URANS. For the optimization approach, two-dimensional URANS is combined with ensemble Kalman filter which is one of the data assimilation techniques. In the assimilation process, a time- and spanwise-averaged LES result is used as pseudo-experimental data. Three-dimensional URANS simulations are performed for the evaluation of the optimization effect. URANS simulations are also applied to a different turbine cascade flow for the evaluation of the robustness of the optimized coefficients. These URANS results confirmed that the optimized coefficients improve the accuracy of turbulence prediction.