Comprehensive shear stress analysis of turbulent boundary layer profiles

2019 ◽  
Vol 879 ◽  
pp. 360-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristofer M. Womack ◽  
Charles Meneveau ◽  
Michael P. Schultz

Motivated by the need for accurate determination of wall shear stress from profile measurements in turbulent boundary layer flows, the total shear stress balance is analysed and reformulated using several well-established semi-empirical relations. The analysis highlights the significant effect that small pressure gradients can have on parameters deduced from data even in nominally zero pressure gradient boundary layers. Using the comprehensive shear stress balance together with the log-law equation, it is shown that friction velocity, roughness length and zero-plane displacement can be determined with only velocity and turbulent shear stress profile measurements at a single streamwise location for nominally zero pressure gradient turbulent boundary layers. Application of the proposed analysis to turbulent smooth- and rough-wall experimental data shows that the friction velocity is determined with accuracy comparable to force balances (approximately 1 %–4 %). Additionally, application to boundary layer data from previous studies provides clear evidence that the often cited discrepancy between directly measured friction velocities (e.g. using force balances) and those derived from traditional total shear stress methods is likely due to the small favourable pressure gradient imposed by a fixed cross-section facility. The proposed comprehensive shear stress analysis can account for these small pressure gradients and allows more accurate boundary layer wall shear stress or friction velocity determination using commonly available mean velocity and shear stress profile data from a single streamwise location.

Author(s):  
Y. X. Hou ◽  
V. S. R. Somandepalli ◽  
M. G. Mungal

Two methods of recovering the entire total shear stress profile from incomplete velocity data in turbulent boundary layers are presented and validated for both DNS simulations and experimental measurements. The first method, an exponential-polynomial curve fit, recovers the whole total shear stress profile well by using the data from the outer part of the boundary layer (y/δ > 0.3). However, this curve fit is sensitive to the quality of the data. The second method, a new (1−y) weighted straight line fit, which is very simple and accurate, has been applied to current experiments of drag reduction in zero pressure gradient turbulent boundary layers with polymer injection. The total shear stress profile obtained from this fit is used to estimate the contribution of the polymer stress to the total shear stress.


1974 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 763-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Deissler

The early and intermediate development of a highly accelerated (or decelerated) turbulent boundary layer is analysed. For sufficiently large accelerations (or pressure gradients) and for total normal strains which are not excessive, the equation for the Reynolds shear stress simplifies to give a stress that remains approximately constant as it is convected along streamlines. The theoretical results for the evolution of the mean velocity in favourable and adverse pressure gradients agree well with experiment for the cases considered. A calculation which includes mass injection at the wall is also given.


1975 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Andersen ◽  
W. M. Kays ◽  
R. J. Moffat

An experimental investigation of the fluid mechanics of the transpired turbulent boundary layer in zero and adverse pressure gradients was carried out on the Stanford Heat and Mass Transfer Apparatus. Profiles of (a) the mean velocity, (b) the intensities of the three components of the turbulent velocity fluctuations and (c) the Reynolds stress were obtained by hot-wire anemometry. The wall shear stress was measured by using an integrated form of the boundary-layer equation to ‘extrapolate’ the measured shear-stress profiles to the wall.The two experimental adverse pressure gradients corresponded to free-stream velocity distributions of the type u∞ ∞ xm, where m = −0·15 and −0·20, x being the streamwise co-ordinate. Equilibrium boundary layers (i.e. flows with velocity defect profile similarity) were obtained when the transpiration velocity v0 was varied such that the blowing parameter B = pv0u∞/τ0 and the Clauser pressure-gradient parameter $\beta\equiv\delta_1\tau_0^{-1}\,dp/dx $ were held constant. (τ0 is the shear stress at the wall and δ1 is the displacement thickness.)Tabular and graphical results are presented.


2008 ◽  
Vol 597 ◽  
pp. 31-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. X. HOU ◽  
V. S. R. SOMANDEPALLI ◽  
M. G. MUNGAL

Zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary-layer drag reduction by polymer injection has been studied with particle image velocimetry. Flow fields ranging from low to maximum drag reduction have been investigated. A previously developed technique – the (1 − y/δ) fit to the total shear stress profile – has been used to evaluate the skin friction, drag reduction and polymer stress. Current results agree well with the semi-log plot of drag reduction vs. normalized polymer flux which has been used by previous workers and can be used as a guide to optimize the use of polymer from a single injector. Detailed flow-field statistics show many special features that pertain to polymer flow. It is shown that the mean velocity responds quickly to the suddenly reduced wall shear stress associated with polymer injection. However, it takes a much longer time for the entire Reynolds shear stress profile to adjust to the same change. The Reynolds shear stress profiles in wall units can be higher than unity and this unique feature can be used to further judge whether the flow is in equilibrium. The streamwise evolution of drag reduction magnitude is used to divide the flow into three regions: development region; steady-state region; and depletion region. The polymer stress is estimated and found to be proportional to drag reduction in the depletion region, but not necessarily so in the other regions. The interaction between injected polymer and turbulent activity in a developing boundary-layer flow is dependent upon the flow history and it produces an equally complex relationship between polymer stress and drag reduction. The stress balance in the boundary layer and the dynamical contribution of the various stresses to the total stress are evaluated and it is seen that the polymer stresses can account for up to 25% of the total stress. This finding is in contrast to channel flows with homogeneous polymer injection where the polymer stress is found to account for up to 60% of the total stress.


2010 ◽  
Vol 664 ◽  
pp. 193-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
XIAOHUA WU

Direct numerical simulation was performed on an incompressible, smooth flat-plate boundary layer at unit molecular Prandtl number and constant surface temperature under free-stream periodically passing turbulent planar wakes over the momentum thickness Reynolds number range of 80 ≤ Reθ ≤ 1850. This inhomogeneous free-stream wake perturbation source with mean deficit differs markedly from the isotropic turbulent patch used in the previous studies of Wu & Moin (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 630, 2009, p. 5; Phys. Fluids, vol. 22, 2010, 085105). Preponderance of hairpin vortices is observed in both the transitional and turbulent regions of the boundary layer. In particular, the internal structure of merged turbulent spots is a hairpin forest; the internal structure of infant turbulent spots is a hairpin packet. Although more chaotic in the turbulent region, numerous hairpin vortices are readily detected in both the near-wall and outer regions of the boundary layer up to Reθ = 1850. This suggests that the hairpin vortices in the higher-Reynolds-number region are not simply the aged hairpin forests convected from the upstream transitional region. Temperature iso-surfaces in the companion thermal boundary layer are found to be a useful tracer in identifying boundary-layer hairpin vortex structures. Total shear stress overshoots wall shear stress in the transitional region and the excess relaxes gradually in the downstream turbulent region. This overshoot is shown to be associated with a localized streamwise acceleration of the streamwise velocity component. Breakdown of the wake-perturbed laminar boundary layer is closely related to the formation of hairpin packets out of quasi-streamwise vortices. Mean and second-order statistics are in good agreement with previous data on the standard turbulent boundary layer. Downstream of transition, normalized root-mean-square (r.m.s.) wall-shear-stress intensity shows almost no variation with Reθ, whereas normalized r.m.s. wall-pressure intensity increases slightly. Taken together with the previous results of Wu & Moin, the generality of the following three phenomena in quasi-standard boundary layers can be reasonably established, namely, preponderance of hairpin vortices in the transitional as well as in the turbulent regions up to Reθ = 1850, transitional total shear stress overshoot, and a laminar-layer breakdown process closely tied to the formation of hairpin packets.


1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 728-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. P. Mislevy ◽  
T. Wang

The effects of adverse pressure gradients on the thermal and momentum characteristics of a heated transitional boundary layer were investigated with free-stream turbulence ranging from 0.3 to 0.6 percent. Boundary layer measurements were conducted for two constant-K cases, K1 = −0.51 × 10−6 and K2 = −1.05 × 10−6. The fluctuation quantities, u′, ν′, t′, the Reynolds shear stress (uν), and the Reynolds heat fluxes (νt and ut) were measured. In general, u′/U∞, ν′/U∞, and νt have higher values across the boundary layer for the adverse pressure-gradient cases than they do for the baseline case (K = 0). The development of ν′ for the adverse pressure gradients was more actively involved than that of the baseline. In the early transition region, the Reynolds shear stress distribution for the K2 case showed a near-wall region of high-turbulent shear generated at Y+ = 7. At stations farther downstream, this near-wall shear reduced in magnitude, while a second region of high-turbulent shear developed at Y+ = 70. For the baseline case, however, the maximum turbulent shear in the transition region was generated at Y+ = 70, and no near-wall high-shear region was seen. Stronger adverse pressure gradients appear to produce more uniform and higher t′ in the near-wall region (Y+ < 20) in both transitional and turbulent boundary layers. The instantaneous velocity signals did not show any clear turbulent/nonturbulent demarcations in the transition region. Increasingly stronger adverse pressure gradients seemed to produce large non turbulent unsteadiness (or instability waves) at a similar magnitude as the turbulent fluctuations such that the production of turbulent spots was obscured. The turbulent spots could not be identified visually or through conventional conditional-sampling schemes. In addition, the streamwise evolution of eddy viscosity, turbulent thermal diffusivity, and Prt, are also presented.


1977 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh W. Coleman ◽  
Robert J. Moffat ◽  
William M. Kays

The behaviour of a fully rough turbulent boundary layer subjected to favourable pressure gradients both with and without blowing was investigated experimentally using a porous test surface composed of densely packed spheres of uniform size. Measurements of profiles of mean velocity and the components of the Reynolds-stress tensor are reported for both unblown and blown layers. Skin-friction coefficients were determined from measurements of the Reynolds shear stress and mean velocity.An appropriate acceleration parameterKrfor fully rough layers is defined which is dependent on a characteristic roughness dimension but independent of molecular viscosity. For a constant blowing fractionFgreater than or equal to zero, the fully rough turbulent boundary layer reaches an equilibrium state whenKris held constant. Profiles of the mean velocity and the components of the Reynolds-stress tensor are then similar in the flow direction and the skin-friction coefficient, momentum thickness, boundary-layer shape factor and the Clauser shape factor and pressure-gradient parameter all become constant.Acceleration of a fully rough layer decreases the normalized turbulent kinetic energy and makes the turbulence field much less isotropic in the inner region (forFequal to zero) compared with zero-pressure-gradient fully rough layers. The values of the Reynolds-shear-stress correlation coefficients, however, are unaffected by acceleration or blowing and are identical with values previously reported for smooth-wall and zero-pressure-gradient rough-wall flows. Increasing values of the roughness Reynolds number with acceleration indicate that the fully rough layer does not tend towards the transitionally rough or smooth-wall state when accelerated.


1951 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-100
Author(s):  
Donald Ross ◽  
J. M. Robertson

Abstract As an interim solution to the problem of the turbulent boundary layer in an adverse pressure gradient, a super-position method of analysis has been developed. In this method, the velocity profile is considered to be the result of two effects: the wall shear stress and the pressure recovery. These are superimposed, yielding an expression for the velocity profiles which approximate measured distributions. The theory also leads to a more reasonable expression for the wall shear-stress coefficient.


Author(s):  
Frank J. Aldrich

A physics-based approach is employed and a new prediction tool is developed to predict the wavevector-frequency spectrum of the turbulent boundary layer wall pressure fluctuations for subsonic airfoils under the influence of adverse pressure gradients. The prediction tool uses an explicit relationship developed by D. M. Chase, which is based on a fit to zero pressure gradient data. The tool takes into account the boundary layer edge velocity distribution and geometry of the airfoil, including the blade chord and thickness. Comparison to experimental adverse pressure gradient data shows a need for an update to the modeling constants of the Chase model. To optimize the correlation between the predicted turbulent boundary layer wall pressure spectrum and the experimental data, an optimization code (iSIGHT) is employed. This optimization module is used to minimize the absolute value of the difference (in dB) between the predicted values and those measured across the analysis frequency range. An optimized set of modeling constants is derived that provides reasonable agreement with the measurements.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document