• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.1971-1978
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• 1992

A turbulent flow in a conical diffuser with total divergence angle of 8.deg. was numerically studied. The low Reynolds number k-.epsilon. model(Launder-Sharma model) was adopted to simulate the turbulence. The continuity and time averaged Navier-Stokes equations in a nonorthogonal coordinate system were solved by a finite volume method based on the fully elliptic formulation. The low Reynolds number k-.epsilon. model reasonably simulates the pressure recovery and the mean velocity components. However, there are also considerable discrepancies between predicted and measured shear stress distribution on the wall and turbulent kinetic energy distributions. It is necessary to investigate the flow structure at the entry of the diffuser, numerically as well as experimentally.