Large eddy simulations on the flow driven by a Rushton turbine

Large eddy simulations were performed on the flow in a baffled stirred tank, driven by a Rushton turbine at Re = 29,000. The simulation procedure consisted of a lattice–Boltzmann scheme for discretizing the Navier–Stokes equations, and a force‐field technique for representing the action of the impeller on the fluid. The subgrid‐scale model was a conventional Smagorinsky model with a Smagorinsky constant cs = 0.12. The uniform, cubic computational grid had a size of about 6 × 106 nodes. The computer code was implemented on a parallel, shared‐memory computer platform. The results on the phase‐resolved average flow, as well as on the turbulence characteristics, are compared with phase‐resolved experimental data. The trailing vortex structure in the vicinity of the impeller was well represented by the simulations.