Evaluation of turbulence models for external flows

An industry-motivated investigation of the application of turbulence models to external fluid flows has been carried out. The motivating application is the melt-blowing fiber production process used by 3M in which friction forces exerted by high-speed air jets stretch pliable polymeric fibers. The complex fluid flow is turbulent and unique. The closest traditional fluid flow is the wall jet. In order to achieve results of sufficient accuracy to be used in the design of the production equipment, a necessary prerequisite is the identification of an appropriate turbulence model. To this end, five turbulence models, commonly offered in commercially available CFD software (FLUENT® Software, ANSYS® CFX® Software, and Star-CD™ Software) were carefully implemented in appropriate numerical simulations of the available experimental data. The investigated turbulence representations included several two-equation models and a direct solution of the RANS equation. The experimental data consisted of measured velocity pr...