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Turbulent Zero
Pressure
Gradient Flat
Plate –
simpleFOAM,
komegaSST
CURIOSITYFLUIDS / TURBULENT ZERO PRESSURE GRADIENT FLAT PLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST

An excellent test case, and case to

familiarize yourself with some of the
 turbulence models available in OpenFOAM
is a 2D flat plate with zero pressure
gradient. I will solve this problem using the
solver simpleFoam and the komegaSST
model.
Here are the sections of this post:
1. Quick Overview: kω-SST (komegaSST)
Boundary Conditions
2. Case set-up and mesh
3. Results
u+ vs. y+
Coefficient of friction
4. Conclusions and useful resources
Download the case file here: kOmega Flat
Plate Tutorial File
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5cQddz3Kaqnc
VRMRHA5MmpMRkk/view?usp=sharing)

Quick Overview:
kω-SST
(komegaSST)
Boundary
Conditions
CURIOSITYFLUIDS / TURBULENT ZERO PRESSURE GRADIENT FLAT PLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST
In this section I will describe the boundary
set-up for komegaSST   where no wall
functions are implemented.
This requires that the y+ along the wall is
 less than or equal to one. For the
komegaSST turbulence model the
boundary conditions are as follows:
At the wall:
ω (omega) – specific dissipation rate
BC type: fixedValue
BC value:

k – turbulent kinetic energy

BC type: fixedValue
BC value: 0
nut – turbulent viscosity
BC type: fixedValue
BC value: 0
In the free-stream:
ω (omega) – specific dissipation rate
BC type: fixedValue
BC value:
k – turbulent kinetic energy
BC type: fixedValue
BC value:
CURIOSITYFLUIDS / TURBULENT ZERO PRESSURE GRADIENT FLAT PLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST

nut – turbulent viscosity

BC type: calculated
 BC value: 0 (this is just an initial
value)
where , and is the normal
distance from the wall to the first cell
center.

Case set-up and

mesh
Free-Stream Properties
For this case I have followed a similar set up
to the 2D flat plate case used on the NASA
turbulence modelling resource website. By
doing this it gives me something to
compare to! However, I am not going to use
the exact set-up on that website. Since we
are using simpleFoam, I am going to set up
this case the way I prefer which is to use a
velocity (U) of 1 m/s and scale all other
properties accordingly. The
simulation properties that I used are :
U∞=1 m/s
ν=4e-7 m2/s

L=2 m
CURIOSITYFLUIDS /These correspond
TURBULENT to a Reynolds
ZERO PRESSURE number
GRADIENT at PLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST
FLAT
L=2m of 5 million .

Grid Generation
 The grid used was generated in blockMesh.
High inflation was used in the boundary
layer region in order to achieve the desired
y+ value of less than 1. For more details on
grid generation using blockMesh see the
OpenFOAM manual!

Grid

Boundary Conditions
For the incompressible solver simpleFoam,
the minimum boundary conditions required
for a simulation are p and U. However, if the
simulation is a RANS simulation additional
boundary conditions are required. For the
kω-SST model we need to have a boundary
condition on k and  ω as well. The boundary
conditions I defined in the zero (0) folder
can be found in the attached tutorial file.
The only boundary condition that really
needs any comment is omega. We calculate
omega using . In
CURIOSITYFLUIDS / TURBULENT ZERO PRESSURE GRADIENT FLAT PLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST
our case the wall distance to the first cell
center is  5.48316E-06. Using our free
stream viscosity of 4E-7 this gives a value
of omega at the wall of 10643595.39.
 Tip for fvSolution
If you find that the results you are getting
are wrong, it could be that the residuals for
the different properties are too high!
Certain properties converge before others
and therefore you need to ensure that they
all converge to a sufficiently low value!

Results
First we compare the coefficient of friction
to the .dat file available from the .DAT
available from the NASA Turbulence
modelling resource. NOTE: We simulated
at  Reynolds number of 5 million  whereas
the NASA setup is at 10 million. So the x
coordinate in the following is plots is
rescaled and in fact we are only using half of
the data from the .DAT file!

Coefficient of Friction

CURIOSITYFLUIDS /We can seeZERO

TURBULENT from the figure
PRESSURE thatFLATthePLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST
GRADIENT
coefficient of friction from our simulation
matches the expected data closely! Hurray!
 Next let’s compare the u+ vs. y+ profile to
the  universal profile for turbulent boundary
layers.  Recall that u+ is the velocity
normalized by the friction velocity ( ),
and y+ is given by the following equation:

The u+ is vs y+ is plotted here:

u+ vs y+

We can see from the figure that our solution

is pretty good! The y+ value of the first node
is located around a y+ of approximately 0.5,
the viscous sublayer matches very closely
and the log law layer is not significantly off!

Conclusions
In this post we simulated a zero pressure
gradient flat plate at a Reynolds number of
5 million. We compared the results for shear
CURIOSITYFLUIDS /stress to theZERO
TURBULENT NASA turbulence
PRESSURE modelling
GRADIENT FLAT PLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST
resource expected results and showed close
agreement. Then the u+ vs y+ profile was
compared to the universal law of the wall
and again the results were okay!
 Some useful
references
The NASA Turbulence Modelling
Resource, http://turbmodels.larc.nasa.gov/

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CURIOSITYFLUIDS / TURBULENT ZERO PRESSURE GRADIENT FLAT PLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST

9 thoughts on “Turbulent
Zero Pressure Gradient Flat
Plate – simpleFOAM,
komegaSST”
›
To all asking about how to create the plot, the CFD solution
will generate the streamwise velocity profile for you. All you
have to do is plot it in terms of u+ and y+. You can use the
same friction velocity calculated using the law of the wall for
this purpose.
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Hi,
What would be a typical y+ to produce u+ vs y+ for a flat plate
if you used k-epsilon model instead? Would the results match
the theory results?
Look forward to hearing from you,
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Hi! it’s a realy great blog! But how can I subscribe to the new
posts of yours? I dont want to miss something important, but
cant find “subscribe” button.
CURIOSITYFLUIDS / TURBULENT ZERO PRESSURE GRADIENT FLAT PLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST
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 Hi! Thanks for your interest in curiosityFluids! I have just
added a follow button to the webpage! You can follow
through wordpress, or by email
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Which surface are you referring to? Can you be more specific?
Best,
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Hello,
Thank you for the nice example. I have two questions about
beta that you used to calculate omega at the wall. I saw that
you used beta_1=0.075. Is this constant suitable for any case
as long as we use y+<1?
The second question is regarding the y+ vs u+ plot. I have
been trying to reproduce the figure but not luck yet. I used
yPlusRAS and wallShearStress. Can you provide a step by step
to get that plot?
Thank you for the great example.
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The constant Beta_1 is a model constant. You can find the

model constants at a reference website such as:
https://turbmodels.larc.nasa.gov/sst.html
CURIOSITYFLUIDS / TURBULENT ZERO PRESSURE GRADIENT FLAT PLATE – SIMPLEFOAM, KOMEGASST
Or in the original paper:
Menter, F. R., “Two-Equation Eddy-Viscosity Turbulence
Models for Engineering Applications,” AIAA Journal, Vol. 32,
 No. 8, August 1994, pp. 1598-1605
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To get the u+ vs. y+ you must extract a line normal to the

surface. Then use the information along the line to
calculate u+ and y+ and plot them against each other.
See more on the law of the wall here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_wall
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I have the exact same question. Did you managed to create

this plot?
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