Numerical and Experimental Studies of Industrial Internal Flows: Application to Ultrasonic Flow Meters

Ultrasonic flow meters present an interesting industrial internal-flow problem due to their unique geometry and complex interaction of fluid flow with sound waves. In this study, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with the Finite Volume Method (FVM) of the general-purpose solver, OpenFOAM, is used to predict the turbulent flow field inside a flow meter. Different levels of fidelity from CFD RANS to LES with various turbulence and subgrid-scale (SGS) models are evaluated and compared with Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements in both qualitative and quantitative manners. The evaluation shows the discrepancies of each method and its computational cost, providing a robust and time-efficient framework to analyse internal-flow problems with similar features.