Two-equation turbulent viscosity model for simulation of transitional flows: An efficient artificial neural network strategy

Laminar-to-turbulent transition phenomena are ubiquitous in natural and industrial flows. As to the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulation method, the workhorse for accurate prediction of such flow regime boils down to the consideration of the transition effect in turbulence modeling. In this paper, an industrial–practical transition–turbulence model with excellent accuracy, robustness, and efficiency is established by the fully connected artificial neural network (ANN), which maps the relation between the RANS mean flow variables and an intermittency factor. A one-equation local correlation-based transition model coupled with Menter's shear stress transport (SST) model is taken as the benchmark. The present two-way coupling ANN model is trained with two National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) airfoils, that is, NACA0012 and NACA2418, at various angles of attack and Mach numbers, while tested with the A-airfoil, NACA0015, and RAE 2822 supercritical airfoils in different flow states. The a posteriori test results manifest that the mean pressure coefficient, skin friction coefficient, size of laminar separation bubble, mean streamwise velocity, Reynolds shear stress, and lift/drag/moment coefficient predicted by the ANN model are all in good agreement with those given by the benchmark transition-based SST model. Furthermore, the ANN model exhibits higher calculation efficiency and convergence speed than the traditional transition-predictive SST model. The present work may pave a new way for machine learning methods to be used in integrated transition–turbulence modeling toward industrial applications.