A practical method of two-equation turbulence modelling using finite elements

Incorporation of the k-epsilon turbulence model into Galerkin finite-element fluid-flow codes (which, unlike upwind finite-difference codes, have no artificial damping) can lead to severe iterative convergence difficulties. This paper introduces an alternative turbulence model (the q-f model) and an associated finite-element discretization method which are designed to overcome these problems. The new model forms the basis of a finite-element fluid-flow code which is robust and efficient. Furthermore, it is demonstrated on a practical example that the code can give good agreement with experiment on fairly coarse meshes.