Effect of Turbulence Model in Numerical Simulation of Single Round Jet at Low Reynolds Number

Single axi-symmetric round jet flow was analyzed using computational techniques and validated with experimental results to establish the suitable turbulence model for simulation of low Reynolds number jets exiting from fully developed pipe. This work is performed as an initial study before computationally simulating multiple impinging jets. To this end a single round jet at Reynolds number of 7500 exiting from a fully developed pipe and entering into stationary air was modeled. Velocity and turbulence profiles were extracted from the simulation and validated with in-house experimental results. It was observed that although all the four turbulence models studied were able to closely predict the mean velocity field, they were not able to accurately predict the turbulence intensity distributions. From the models studied, it was concluded that SST k- ω model was the best turbulence model for simulating low Reynolds number jet flow exiting from fully developed pipe.