Molecular-Gas-Dynamics Simulation of Turbulent Minimal Couette Flow

The Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method of molecular gas dynamics (MGD) is used to simulate turbulent Minimal Couette Flow (MCF) at Re=500. The initial flow field is the laminar velocity profile plus a perturbation. Subsequently, streamwise vortices continually form, interact, and decay. The DSMC average wall shear stress, average kinetic energy, and Law of the Wall agree closely with Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS). These results indicate that MGD methods such as DSMC that use molecular chaos to perform collisions can simulate sustained wall-bounded turbulent shear flows with good accuracy. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525. This paper describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the United States Government.