Nonlinear Interaction of Coherent Structures in Wall Turbulence at Low-to-Moderate Reynolds Numbers

Author(s):  
Kaoru Iwamoto ◽  
Yuji Suzuki ◽  
Nobuhide Kasagi
Fluids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
George Sofiadis ◽  
Ioannis Sarris

Fluid microstructure nature has a direct effect on turbulence enhancement or attenuation. Certain classes of fluids, such as polymers, tend to reduce turbulence intensity, while others, like dense suspensions, present the opposite results. In this article, we take into consideration the micropolar class of fluids and investigate turbulence intensity modulation for three different Reynolds numbers, as well as different volume fractions of the micropolar density, in a turbulent channel flow. Our findings support that, for low micropolar volume fractions, turbulence presents a monotonic enhancement as the Reynolds number increases. However, on the other hand, for sufficiently high volume fractions, turbulence intensity drops, along with Reynolds number increment. This result is considered to be due to the effect of the micropolar force term on the flow, suppressing near-wall turbulence and enforcing turbulence activity to move further away from the wall. This is the first time that such an observation is made for the class of micropolar fluid flows, and can further assist our understanding of physical phenomena in the more general non-Newtonian flow regime.


Author(s):  
Cristian Marchioli ◽  
Fabio Sbrizzai ◽  
Alfredo Soldati

Particle transfer in the wall region of turbulent boundary layers is dominated by the coherent structures which control the turbulence regeneration cycle. Coherent structures bring particles toward the wall and away from the wall and favour particle segregation in the viscous region giving rise to nonuniform particle distribution profiles which peak close to the wall. In this work, we focus on the transfer mechanism of different size particles and on the influence of gravity on particles deposition. By tracking O(105) particles in Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of a turbulent channel flow at Reτ = 150, we find that particles may reach the wall directly or may accumulate in the wall region, under the low-speed streaks. Even though low-speed streaks are ejection-like environments, particles are not re-entrained into the outer region. Particles segregated very near the wall by the trapping mechanisms we investigated in a previous work [1] are slowly driven to the wall. We find that gravity plays a role on particle distribution but, for small particles (τp+ < 3), the controlling transfer mechanism is related to near-wall turbulence structure.


2019 ◽  
Vol 863 ◽  
pp. 407-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sicong Wu ◽  
Kenneth T. Christensen ◽  
Carlos Pantano

Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent channel flow over rough surfaces, formed from hexagonally packed arrays of hemispheres on both walls, were performed at friction Reynolds numbers $Re_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}=200$, $400$ and $600$. The inner normalized roughness height $k^{+}=20$ was maintained for all Reynolds numbers, meaning all flows were classified as transitionally rough. The spacing between hemispheres was varied within $d/k=2$–$4$. The statistical properties of the rough-wall flows were contrasted against a complementary smooth-wall DNS at $Re_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}=400$ and literature data at $Re_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}=2003$ revealing strong modifications of the near-wall turbulence, although the outer-layer structure was found to be qualitatively consistent with smooth-wall flow. Amplitude modulation (AM) analysis was used to explore the degree of interaction between the flow in the roughness sublayer and that of the outer layer utilizing all velocity components. This analysis revealed stronger modulation effects, compared to smooth-wall flow, on the near-wall small-scale fluctuations by the larger-scale structures residing in the outer layer irrespective of roughness arrangement and Reynolds number. A predictive inner–outer model based on these interactions, and exploiting principal component analysis (PCA), was developed to predict the statistics of higher-order moments of all velocity fluctuations, thus addressing modelling of anisotropic effects introduced by roughness. The results show excellent agreement between the predicted near-wall statistics up to fourth-order moments compared to the original statistics from the DNS, which highlights the utility of the PCA-enhanced AM model in generating physics-based predictions in both smooth- and rough-wall turbulence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 862 ◽  
pp. 1029-1059 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiang Yang ◽  
Ashley P. Willis ◽  
Yongyun Hwang

A new set of exact coherent states in the form of a travelling wave is reported in plane channel flow. They are continued over a range in $Re$ from approximately $2600$ up to $30\,000$, an order of magnitude higher than those discovered in the transitional regime. This particular type of exact coherent states is found to be gradually more localised in the near-wall region on increasing the Reynolds number. As larger spanwise sizes $L_{z}^{+}$ are considered, these exact coherent states appear via a saddle-node bifurcation with a spanwise size of $L_{z}^{+}\simeq 50$ and their phase speed is found to be $c^{+}\simeq 11$ at all the Reynolds numbers considered. Computation of the eigenspectra shows that the time scale of the exact coherent states is given by $h/U_{cl}$ in channel flow at all Reynolds numbers, and it becomes equivalent to the viscous inner time scale for the exact coherent states in the limit of $Re\rightarrow \infty$. The exact coherent states at several different spanwise sizes are further continued to a higher Reynolds number, $Re=55\,000$, using the eddy-viscosity approach (Hwang & Cossu, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 105, 2010, 044505). It is found that the continued exact coherent states at different sizes are self-similar at the given Reynolds number. These observations suggest that, on increasing Reynolds number, new sets of self-sustaining coherent structures are born in the near-wall region. Near this onset, these structures scale in inner units, forming the near-wall self-sustaining structures. With further increase of Reynolds number, the structures that emerged at lower Reynolds numbers subsequently evolve into the self-sustaining structures in the logarithmic region at different length scales, forming a hierarchy of self-similar coherent structures as hypothesised by Townsend (i.e. attached eddy hypothesis). Finally, the energetics of turbulent flow is discussed for a consistent extension of these dynamical systems notions to high Reynolds numbers.


2013 ◽  
Vol 718 ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. McKeon

AbstractMarusic et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 716, 2013, R3) show the first clear evidence of universal logarithmic scaling emerging naturally (and simultaneously) in the mean velocity and the intensity of the streamwise velocity fluctuations about that mean in canonical turbulent flows near walls. These observations represent a significant advance in understanding of the behaviour of wall turbulence at high Reynolds number, but perhaps the most exciting implication of the experimental results lies in the agreement with the predictions of such scaling from a model introduced by Townsend (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 11, 1961, pp. 97–120), commonly termed the attached eddy hypothesis. The elegantly simple, yet powerful, study by Marusic et al. should spark further investigation of the behaviour of all fluctuating velocity components at high Reynolds numbers and the outstanding predictions of the attached eddy hypothesis.


2018 ◽  
Vol 842 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Jiménez

This article discusses the description of wall-bounded turbulence as a deterministic high-dimensional dynamical system of interacting coherent structures, defined as eddies with enough internal dynamics to behave relatively autonomously from any remaining incoherent part of the flow. The guiding principle is that randomness is not a property, but a methodological choice of what to ignore in the flow, and that a complete understanding of turbulence, including the possibility of control, requires that it be kept to a minimum. After briefly reviewing the underlying low-order statistics of flows at moderate Reynolds numbers, the article examines what two-point statistics imply for the decomposition of the flow into individual eddies. Intense eddies are examined next, including their temporal evolution, and shown to satisfy many of the properties required for coherence. In particular, it is shown that coherent structures larger than the Corrsin scale are a natural consequence of the shear. In wall-bounded turbulence, they can be classified into coherent dispersive waves and transient bursts. The former are found in the viscous layer near the wall, and as very large structures spanning the entire boundary layer. Although they are shear-driven, these waves have enough internal structure to maintain a uniform advection velocity. Conversely, bursts exist at all scales, are characteristic of the logarithmic layer, and interact almost linearly with the shear. While the waves require a wall to determine their length scale, the bursts are essentially independent from it. The article concludes with a brief review of our present theoretical understanding of turbulent structures, and with a list of open problems and future perspectives.‘Chance is the name we give to what we choose to ignore (Voltaire)’


2010 ◽  
Vol 653 ◽  
pp. 519-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
VINCENT DOUSSET ◽  
ALBAN POTHÉRAT

We investigate the laminar shedding of hairpin vortices in the wake of a truncated square cylinder placed in a duct, for Reynolds numbers around the critical threshold of the onset of vortex shedding. We single out the formation mechanism of the hairpin vortices by means of a detailed analysis of the flow patterns in the steady regime. We show that unlike in previous studies of similar structures, the dynamics of the hairpin vortices are entwined with that of the counter-rotating pair of streamwise vortices, which we found to be generated in the bottom part of the near wake (these are usually referred to as ‘base vortices’). In particular, once the hairpin structure is released, the base vortices attach to it, forming its legs, so these are streamwise, and not spanwise as previously observed in unconfined wakes or behind cylinders of lower aspect ratios. We also single out a trail of Ω-shaped vortices, generated between successive hairpin vortices through a mechanism that is analogous to that active in near-wall turbulence. Finally, we show how the dynamics of the structures we identified determine the evolution of the drag coefficients and Strouhal numbers when the Reynolds number varies.


Author(s):  
W. J. Baars ◽  
N. Hutchins ◽  
I. Marusic

Small-scale velocity fluctuations in turbulent boundary layers are often coupled with the larger-scale motions. Studying the nature and extent of this scale interaction allows for a statistically representative description of the small scales over a time scale of the larger, coherent scales. In this study, we consider temporal data from hot-wire anemometry at Reynolds numbers ranging from Re τ ≈2800 to 22 800, in order to reveal how the scale interaction varies with Reynolds number. Large-scale conditional views of the representative amplitude and frequency of the small-scale turbulence, relative to the large-scale features, complement the existing consensus on large-scale modulation of the small-scale dynamics in the near-wall region. Modulation is a type of scale interaction, where the amplitude of the small-scale fluctuations is continuously proportional to the near-wall footprint of the large-scale velocity fluctuations. Aside from this amplitude modulation phenomenon, we reveal the influence of the large-scale motions on the characteristic frequency of the small scales, known as frequency modulation. From the wall-normal trends in the conditional averages of the small-scale properties, it is revealed how the near-wall modulation transitions to an intermittent-type scale arrangement in the log-region. On average, the amplitude of the small-scale velocity fluctuations only deviates from its mean value in a confined temporal domain, the duration of which is fixed in terms of the local Taylor time scale. These concentrated temporal regions are centred on the internal shear layers of the large-scale uniform momentum zones, which exhibit regions of positive and negative streamwise velocity fluctuations. With an increasing scale separation at high Reynolds numbers, this interaction pattern encompasses the features found in studies on internal shear layers and concentrated vorticity fluctuations in high-Reynolds-number wall turbulence. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Toward the development of high-fidelity models of wall turbulence at large Reynolds number’.


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