A high-resolution code for large eddy simulation of incompressible turbulent boundary layer flows

• A finite difference framework for incompressible wall-modelled LES.
• Stretched-vortex SGS model and virtual wall model are used.
• We report reasonable LES results with coarse mesh (16 uniform points).
• LES can be performed for extremely Reynolds numbers (Re ≈ 10121012).

We describe a framework for large eddy simulation (LES) of incompressible turbulent boundary layers over a flat plate. This framework uses a fractional-step method with fourth-order finite difference on a staggered mesh. We present several laminar examples to establish the fourth-order accuracy and energy conservation property of the code. Furthermore, we implement a recycling method to generate turbulent inflow. We use the stretched spiral vortex subgrid-scale model and virtual wall model to simulate the turbulent boundary layer flow. We find that the case with Reθ≈2.5×105Reθ≈2.5×105 agrees well with available experimental measurements of wall friction, streamwise velocity profiles and turbulent intensities. We demonstrate that for cases with extremely large Reynolds numbers (Reθ=1012)(Reθ=1012), the present LES can reasonably predict the flow with a coarse mesh. The parallel implementation of the LES code demonstrates reasonable scaling on O(103)O(103) cores.