The most significant challenge in all areas of applied fluid dynamics is posed by a lack of understanding and thus poor prediction of turbulence dependent features. Improving the capabilities of turbulence models when predicting these complex or separated fluid flows offers the potential of reducing energy consumption of aircraft, cars, and ships, with consequent reduction in emissions and noise.
The HiFi-TURB project sets out a highly ambitious and innovative program of work designed to address influential deficiencies in advanced statistical models of turbulence. Current industrial practice relies greatly on turbulence modelling implemented within the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) framework, wherein turbulence is described by models represented by ensemble-averaged properties.
Time-resolved Large Eddy Simulations (LES) and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) yield superior realism in representing turbulence, but they are not directly applicable in the most of the industrial design work due to the high computational cost and they generate massive data sets that require elaborate and time-consuming statistical analysis.
The vision – the paradigm – of the HiFi-TURB project is to generate and exploit LES- and DNS- data for a carefully selected set of flow configurations that contain, collectively, most features of interest of complex 3D flows and separated regions. This is done for the purpose of improving substantially advanced RANS models for industrial use. At the core of the project, various Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques are applied to process the large amounts of data generated and to gain new insights into the physics of such flows. It is part of the rationale of the project that ML driven modelling approaches are guided by world leading experts in turbulence modelling, namely F. Menter, P. Spalart, M. Leschziner, S. Wallin, S. Jakirlic, W. Rodi, M.V. Salvetti.
The generated database and model results are disseminated towards the wide research community, via the ERCOFTAC Knowledge Base Wiki.
HiFi-TURB can claim to have been a trail-blazing learning exercise and significant technical progress is achieved in all work packages. The project was characterized by a high level of interaction between the partners involved in the various work packages. The validity of the HiFi-TURB paradigm has been successfully demonstrated, by deriving interpretable turbulence models from high-fidelity statistical data and by implementing them successfully into several simulation codes.