A highly resolved computation o f the flow past a sphere at Reynolds number Re = 3700 using a finite element method (FEM)-based residual-based variational multiscale (RBVMS) formulation is performed. Both uniform and turbulent inflow conditions are considered with the uniform flow case validated against a previous direct numerical sim ulation (DNS) study. We find that, as a result o f adding free-stream turbulence o f moder ate intensity, the drag force on the sphere is increased, the length o f the recirculation bubble is reduced dramatically, and the near-wake turbulence is significantly more ener getic than in case o f uniform inflow. In the case o f uniform inflow, we find that the solu tion exhibits low temporal frequency modes, which necessitate long-time simulations to obtain high-fidelity statistical averages. Subjecting the sphere to turbulent inflow removes the low-frequency modes from the solution and enables shorter-time simulations to achieve converged flow statistics.

Onsager's pancake approximation is used to construct a simulation to model fluid flow in a gas centrifuge. The governing 6th order partial differential equation is broken down into an equivalent coupled system of three equations and then solved numerically. In addition to a discussion on the baseline solution, known problems and future work possibilities are presented.