7/3/2021 (71) Understanding Y+ for CFD Simulations | LinkedIn
الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
Understanding Y+ for CFD
Simulations
٢٠١٩ مارس١٤ تم النشر في
.Sijal A
CFD Engineer, Online CFD trainer, Udemy instructor, Founder and CEO of
Advanced Engineering Solutions
متابعة
مقال24
Yplus is an important parameter to be considered in any CFD
simulation for good results. Here is formulae for Y+ and related terms:
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الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
For complete course including ongoing discussion and many more,
please subscribe to:
Mastering Ansys CFD (Level 2)
Udemy
External aerodynamics and turbo-machinery CFD in Ansys Fluent, ICEMCFD, Space
Claim & Design Modeler
But what I see that people around are blindly following some
guidelines which are not applicable for their cases. And they end up
with problems in solution convergence and accuracy etc.
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1. For example if one situation is applicable for some cases, but may
الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
not be on the cases he or she is solving. For example if you are
solving the flow over the blunt body, then in this case, major drag is
coming from pressure rather than the skin friction or boundary
layer. So fine tuning boundary layer mesh will not give you much
advantage.
2. For very high Reynolds number flows, where boundary layer
becomes very thin and effects of it are not important.
3. For high Mach number flow, consequently Reynolds number is also
very high, again boundary layer is thin and results are dependent on
shock wave resolution rather than boundary layer resolution.
4. Flow with no separation, and still you are trying with Y+ of order 1
or less. In this case you are increasing round off error. This will be
counter productive as you are not understanding flow physics.
5. When you are not interested in drag coefficient and still you are
trying for high resolution in boundary layer. In this case you are not
getting much advantage as the flow parameters you are interested
are not dependent on boundary layer flow. But rather flow physics
outside the boundary layer. For example lift coefficient.
Now I want to point out you guys to the article on the hybrid wall
functions, also known as universal wall function which are valid in all
zones of boundary layer (viscous sub-layer, buffer layer and log layer)
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الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
Hybrid Wall Functions
In above article you will see that now new hybrid wall function is
applicable for all Y+ values. But keep in mind that these hybrid wall
functions are designed for SA and K-Omega type models (SST
included). However, K-Epsilon type models are designed for wall
functions i.e. Y+ >30. But with one equation treatment for K-Epsilon
models you can integrate them to viscous sub-layer. In this case K-
Epsilon type models requires Y+<0.2. This is also known as enhanced
wall treatment.
Now based on the above article you can see that, strict value of Y+ < 2
for SST model and Y+ < 1 for SA model is now not must. So keeping
Y+ upto 10 will give you same results as of mesh with Y+ ~ 1.
Also note that for transition modeling (laminar to turbulence transition)
you need mesh with Y+ < 1 everywhere along with the requirement of
fine mesh in stream-wise direction.
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7/3/2021 (71) Understanding Y+ for CFD Simulations | LinkedIn
Based١ on above discussion I would like to give you some guidelines /
الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
best practices:
1. Keep Y+ below 10 for viscous dominate flows with separation.
2. Use Y+ < 1 for the transition prediction and heat transfer
calculations.
3. Use Y+ < 10 for SST model (omega based models in general)
4. Use K-Epsilon model with scalable wall functions (default option
in new version of Fluent). It will keep the Y+ above 11.06 so that it
does not suffer the limitation of old standard wall functions.
Moreover now you can carry the successive refinement of mesh,
which was not possible with standard WFs.
Now I would like to give you some results which I ran on Ahmed Body
with Hexa Mesh with Y+ < 1 and Y+ ~ 10.
Here is picture of Mesh:
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الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
Zoomed view in boundary layer (For Y+1 mesh):
Zoomed view in boundary layer (For Y+10 mesh):
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الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
Here is the plot of experimental velocity profiles at various locations.
We will compare velocity profile at X = -123 mm for two Y + values
i.e. 1 and 10. You can get experimental profiles from Experimental
velocity profiles at different axial locations
No alt text provided for this image
Here are the results for K-Epsilon realizable mode at X = -123 mm:
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No alt text provided for this image
الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
See the location of X = -123 and corresponding mesh for Y+ = 1 and
Y+ = 10 Mesh.
View of Y+ =1 mesh with line for XY plot at X = -123 mm,
No alt text provided for this image
Zoomed view of Y+ =1 mesh with line for XY plot at X = -123 mm,
No alt text provided for this image
View of Y+ =10 mesh with line for XY plot at X = -123 mm,
No alt text provided for this image
Zoomed view of Y+ =10 mesh with line for XY plot at X = -123 mm,
No alt text provided for this image
And here is the Drag Coefficient comparison:
No alt text provided for this image
You can see difference between Y+ = 1 and Y+ =10 is around 2.5%.
And keep in mind that K-Epsilon type models do not use imply hybrid
wall functions, rather they work on enchanted wall treatment. And
according to Fluent user guide, the value of Y+ should not exceed 3 to
5.
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Here is١ velocity profile for the SA Model:
الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
No alt text provided for this image
And here is the Drag Coefficient comparison:
No alt text provided for this image
Which shows less than 1.5% error between Y+1 and Y+10 results.
Here is velocity profile for SST model:
No alt text provided for this image
And drag coefficient comparison shows the 2% error between Y+1 and
Y+10 meshes.
No alt text provided for this image
Here is the contour plot of Y+ for Y = +1 and Y = +10 grids.
Y+1 Mesh:
No alt text provided for this image
Y+10 Mesh:
No alt text provided for this image
Based on above we can conclude it is not necessary to always use the
Y+ <1 mesh for better results. With hybrid wall functions you can use
mesh up to Y+ 10 without much problems. This will also reduce aspect
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١
ratio and number of mesh counts. This will ensure the good
الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
convergence in less time. While maintaining the same accuracy to that
of Y+ = 1 mesh.
Here is the Y+ calculator for calculating Y+ value for first cell height
based on first cell distance and Reynolds number and for calculating
first cell height based on given Y+ and Reynolds number. This is
designed in excel so you can use it very easily.
Y+ calculator
Some common mistakes made by CFDers are:
1. Creating mesh with required Y+ but then putting next cell outside
the boundary layer. Please keep in mind that boundary layer cannot
cannot be resolved with just one point. You need to put atleast 10-
15 points for Y+ ~ 10 mesh and up to 40 nodes for Y+ ~ 1.
2. Trying to create very fine mesh with Y+ ~ 1 for supersonic flows
where boundary layer contribution is negligible.
3. Creating meshes of Y+ = 1 for all turbulence models. Different
turbulence models have different requirements for Y+ values. Even
the Y+ values varies between two turbulence models for same
mesh. It is because the way friction velocity is calculated for
different turbulence models.
4. For transition flows creating mesh with maximum Y+ < 1, but not
providing enough points in stream-wise direction. This will
calculate the wrong location of transition point and hence
increasing or decreasing the frictions effects due to turbulence.
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١
5. Not putting sufficient points in viscous sub-layer. This means that
الوظائف شبكتي الصفحة الرئيسية
we are not resolving velocity profile properly in viscous sub layer.
For some cases this can critical. So try to atleast put 3-5 points in
viscous sub-layer. Here is the XY plot for velocity profile for K-
epsilon with Realizable model with less number of nodes in viscous
sub layer. this will not resolve the sub laye properly and you will be
able to get the negative values of velocity in boundary layer.
No alt text provided for this image
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تم النشر بواسطة
24 .Sijal A
متابعة … Udemy instructor, Founder and CEO of
Advanced Engineering Solutions
مقال تم النشر • عامان
تعليق10 · ٢١٦
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) أشهر (ُم حرر4 من الدرجة الثالثة+
• Andrea Rapisarda
Senior CFD Specialist presso Electrolux
Great job Mr. Sijal! I suggest to check your external links 🙂
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· إعجاب
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/understanding-y-cfd-simulation-sijal-ahmed/ 11/13
7/3/2021 (71) Understanding Y+ for CFD Simulations | LinkedIn
أشهر١ 4 من الدرجة الثالثة+
• .Sijal A
الوظائف شبكتيCFD الرئيسية
Engineer, Online CFD trainer, Udemy instructor, Founder and CEO of
الصفحة
Advanced Engineering Solutions
Oh, external links are not working. Thanks for pointing me for this issue.
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أشهر6 من الدرجة الثالثة+
• Peter Vlasschaert
consultant (phoenix project) at Mobistar
https://petervlaschemeng.weebly.com/
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.Sijal A
CFD Engineer, Online CFD trainer, Udemy instructor, Founder and CEO of Advanced
Engineering Solutions
متابعة
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Y+ and double precision solver
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Online CFD Resources
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Heat transfer CFD in Fluent
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