Wall-resolved Large Eddy Simulation of a flow through a square-edged orifice in a round pipe at Re = 25,000

The orifice plate is a pressure differential device frequently used for flow measurements in pipes across different industries. The present study demonstrates the accuracy obtainable using a wall-resolved Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach to predict the velocity, the Reynolds stresses, the pressure loss and the discharge coefficient for a flow through a square-edged orifice in a round pipe at a Reynolds number of 25,000. The ratio of the orifice diameter to the pipe diameter is β = 0.62, and the ratio of the orifice thickness to the pipe diameter is 0.11. The mesh is sized using refinement criteria at the wall and preliminary RANS results to ensure that the solution is resolved beyond an estimated Taylor micro-scale. The inlet condition is simulated using a recycling method, and the LES is run with a dynamic Smagorinsky sub-grid scale (SGS) model. The sensitivity to the SGS model and to the pressure-velocity coupling is shown to be small in the present study. The LES is compared with the available experimental data and ISO 5167-2. In general, the LES shows good agreement with the velocity from the experimental data. The profiles of the Reynolds stresses are similar, but an offset is observed in the diagonal stresses. The pressure loss and discharge coefficients are shown to be in very good agreement with the predictions of ISO 5167-2. Therefore, the wall-resolved LES is shown to be highly accurate in simulating the flow across a square-edged orifice.