Numerical investigation of mixed-phase turbulence in flow past a partially merged plate

Large-eddy simulation (LES) is conducted to study the statistical properties of mixed-phase turbulence induced by the breaking of bow waves in flow past a partially submerged plate. The simulation is performed using a finite difference method, with the air-water interface captured by a coupled level-set and volume-of-fluid method. Four cases are conducted to investigate the effects of Froude number on turbulent statistics, including the mean velocity, turbulence kinetic energy, and turbulence mass flux (TMF), which is an additional unclosed term in the Reynolds-averaged momentum equation. The TMF, especially its vertical component, shows a complex behaviour with respect to the Froude number. This property of the TMF imposes high demands on the robustness of the closure model of TMF. The present LES data is further used to examine a closure model of the TMF production term, which shows a high correlation with the data obtained from LES.