The Effects of the Wall-Layer Models on the Outer Turbulence Structures in Large Eddy Simulation of Pipe Flows

Reproduction of the outer turbulence in Large Eddy Simulation (LES), when the wall-layer model is adopted in the inner layer, is investigated to validate the hybrid RANS/LES as an approximate near-wall treatment. Special emphasis is on the possibility of Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) for the reproduction of outer large (∼ R) and very large (∼ 10R) streaky structures typically observed in the pipe turbulence. LES and DES of fully developed turbulent pipe flows at the friction Reynolds number up to 5000 are conducted using a very long analysis region to capture entire outer scales. It is found that the outer scales are properly captured in DES independent on the unphysical super-streaks in the RANS region near the wall, as long as sufficient height for the DES buffer layer is maintained. Our results shed light on the origin of the outer structures, which are rather autonomous similar to the inner sublayer streaks, and these two structures with different scaling exists in the isolated manner.