The Effect of Tube Arrangement and Turbulence Models for Steady Flow Past Tube Bundles

In present work, three-dimensional flow in tube bundles for different tube configurations is studied. In-line and staggered type bundle arrangements are used. The tube configurations are 3.6x1.6 and 3.6x2.1 for staggered arrays and 3.6x2.1 for in-line arrays. The lattice-Boltzmann method is used for numerical calculations. The validation processes are made by using the experimental data available in ERCOFTAC Database (Case 80). The turbulence models LES (Smagorinsky-Lilly) and VLES (k-omega) are selected for comparison. Also, mesh sensitivity analyses are made. Post processed quantities such as axial and transverse mean velocity and corresponding rms (root mean square) velocity profiles at different locations are compared with the experimental data. The simulation results of LES and VLES are in good agreement with the experiment for different tube bundle arrangements.