Probability density function modeling of scalar mixing from concentrated sources in turbulent channel flow

Dispersion of a passive scalar from concentrated sources in fully developed turbulent channel flow is studied with the probability density function PDF method. The joint PDF of velocity, turbulent frequency and scalar concentration is represented by a large number of Lagrangian particles. A stochastic near-wall PDF model combines the generalized Langevin model of Haworth and Pope Phys. Fluids 29, 387 1986 with Durbin’s J. Fluid Mech. 249, 465 1993 method of elliptic relaxation to provide a mathematically exact treatment of convective and viscous transport with a nonlocal representation of the near-wall Reynolds stress anisotropy. The presence of walls is incorporated through the imposition of no-slip and impermeability conditions on particles without the use of damping or wall-functions. Information on the turbulent time scale is supplied by the gamma-distribution model of van Slooten et al. Phys. Fluids 10, 246 1998 . Two different micromixing models are compared that incorporate the effect of small scale mixing on the transported scalar: the widely used interaction by exchange with the mean and the interaction by exchange with the conditional mean model. Single-point velocity and concentration statistics are compared to direct numerical simulation and experimental data at Re =1080 based on the friction velocity and the channel half width. The joint model accurately reproduces a wide variety of conditional and unconditional statistics in both physical and composition space. © 2007 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2803348