Evaluation of RANS turbulence models for the simulation of channel flow

Abstract: The objective of this report is to investigate how RANS models perform on fully developed channel flow, for Re = 13 350, and the simulations are made with the open source software OpenFOAM. The velocity and turbulent kinetic energy profiles are compared with previously published DNS results. A short introduction to turbulence modelling is presented with focus on channel flow and the boundary layer. In total eleven models are evaluated, and the results are of varying quality. A convergence study is presented for two models,  and reveals that the expected second order convergence is fulfilled for one of them, whereas the study for the other model is more ambiguous without a clear conclusion. The OpenFOAM case setups for each model and the results gathered from the simulations are publicly available.