  We present a robust and accurate discretization approach for incompressible
turbulent flows based on high-order discontinuous Galerkin methods. The DG
discretization of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations uses the local
Lax-Friedrichs flux for the convective term, the symmetric interior penalty
method for the viscous term, and central fluxes for the velocity-pressure
coupling terms. Stability of the discretization approach for under-resolved,
turbulent flow problems is realized by a purely numerical stabilization
approach. Consistent penalty terms that enforce the incompressibility
constraint as well as inter-element continuity of the velocity field in a weak
sense render the numerical method a robust discretization scheme in the
under-resolved regime. The penalty parameters are derived by means of
dimensional analysis using penalty factors of order 1. Applying these penalty
terms in a postprocessing step leads to an efficient solution algorithm for
turbulent flows. The proposed approach is applicable independently of the
solution strategy used to solve the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations,
i.e., it can be used for both projection-type solution methods as well as
monolithic solution approaches. Since our approach is based on consistent
penalty terms, it is by definition generic and provides optimal rates of
convergence when applied to laminar flow problems. Robustness and accuracy are
verified for the Orr-Sommerfeld stability problem, the Taylor-Green vortex
problem, and turbulent channel flow. Moreover, the accuracy of high-order
discretizations as compared to low-order discretizations is investigated for
these flow problems. A comparison to state-of-the-art computational approaches
for large-eddy simulation indicates that the proposed methods are highly
attractive components for turbulent flow solvers.
