Extension of the SU2 open source CFD code to the simulation of turbulent flows of fluids modelled with complex thermophysical laws

This paper presents the extension of the open source SU2 software suite to perform turbulent Non-Ideal Compressible Fluid-Dynamics (NICFD) simulations. A new built-in thermodynamic library has been developed and tightly coupled with the existing structure of the code, properly re-organized for accommodating arbitrary thermophysical models. The library implements simple models and interfaces to an external software for a more accurate estimation of thermophysical properties of NICFD pure fluids and mixtures. Moreover, the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are spatially discretized by resorting to suitably defined convective and viscous numerical schemes for general fluids. The capabilities of the code are finally verified on two- and three-dimensional inviscid and turbulent flow problems against solutions obtained with different NICFD solvers, and known analytical ones. The results prove that SU2 is comparatively accurate and computational efficient with respect to existing codes. Definitively, SU2 can be considered as a trustworthy tool for NICFD-based simulations and the future pillar of advanced automated design techniques involving complex fluid laws.