A systematic procedure for determining coefficients of RANS models

In complex turbulent flows where direct numerical simulations may be computationally cost-prohibitive, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) modeling remains an attractive and widely used alternative. Often, RANS models contain many coefficients that are determined arbitrarily. We focus on a Reynolds stress transport modeling framework targeting prediction of wall-bounded turbulent flows and separated flows. We develop a systematic procedure for determining model coefficients starting from simple canonical cases with particular attention to data from recent literature and progressively building in complexity. These cases and are chosen to incrementally activate only a few coefficients at a time with emphasis on isolating anisotropy using recent data from literature. Both a priori and a posteriori testing is used to highlight model deficiencies.