RANS Simulations of Turbulent Round Jets in the Presence of Density Difference and Comparison with High-Resolution Experimental Data

In this paper, the novel experimental data reported by Qin et al. [1] are used to assess the predictive capability of the Realizable k-epsilon (RKE) model and Reynolds stress transport (RST) model for buoyant jets and understand the reasons for discrepancies. In particular, we present the comparison between simulation results of a turbulent buoyant jet flow in the self-similar region with high-resolution experimental data obtained for a jet injected from a 2 mm nozzle into a 300x300x300 $mm^3$ tank, with nominal Reynolds number equal to 10,000. Results show that streamwise velocity profiles predicted by the RST model had good agreement with experimental data, while the larger spreading rate was predicted by the RKE model. For turbulent statistics, turbulent kinetic energy witnessed a discrepancy in the center region, with shear stress well predicted for both models. Comparison of the turbulent kinetic energy production term with experimental data revealed reasons for the discrepancy and also showed that the gradient of the streamwise velocity in the crosswise direction contributes the most to the turbulent kinetic energy production. Investigation of model coefficients of the turbulent dissipation equation for the RKE model has revealed that $C_{\varepsilon2}$ is critical in model accuracy.