In turbulence modeling

the RNG and Realizable models have important improvements in the turbulent production and dissipation terms in comparison to the Standard. The selection of the appropriate turbulence model has an impact on the convergence and solution in STRs

and they are used in mixing

multiphase modeling or as starting solution of transient models as DES and LES. Although there are several studies with the pitched blade turbine (PBT) impeller

most of them used the Standard model as representative of all k-ε models

using structured hexahedral grids composed of low number of cells

and in some cases under axial symmetry assumptions. Accordingly

in this work the assessment of the Standard

RNG and Realizable models to describe the turbulent flow field of this impeller

using the Multiple Reference Frame (MRF) and Sliding Mesh (SM) approaches with tetrahedral domains in dense grids

is presented. This kind of cell elements is especially suitable to reproduce complex geometries. Flow velocities and turbulent parameters were verified experimentally by PIV and torque measurements. The three models were capable of predicting fairly the pumping number

the power number based on torque

and velocities. Although the RNG improved the predictions of the turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation rate

the Realizable model presented better performance for both approaches. All models failed in the prediction of the total dissipation rate

and a dependence of its value on the number of cells for the MRF was found.