The wave structure of turbulent spots in plane Poiseuille flow

1987 ◽  
Vol 178 ◽  
pp. 405-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan S. Henningson ◽  
P. Henrik Alfredsson

The wave packets located at the wingtips of turbulent spots in plane Poiseuille flow have been investigated by hot-film anemometry. The streamwise velocity disturbances associated with the waves were found to be antisymmetric with respect to the channel centreline. The amplitude of the waves had a maximum close to the wall that was about 4% of the centreline velocity. The modified velocity field outside the spot was measured and linear stability analysis of the measured velocity profiles showed that the flow field was less stable than the undisturbed flow. The phase velocity and amplitude distribution of the waves were in reasonable agreement with the theory, which together with the symmetry properties indicate that the wave packet consisted of the locally least stable Tollmien-Schlichting mode.

2019 ◽  
Vol 880 ◽  
pp. 478-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shengqi Zhang ◽  
Zhenhua Xia ◽  
Yipeng Shi ◽  
Shiyi Chen

Spanwise rotating plane Poiseuille flow (RPPF) is one of the canonical flow problems to study the effect of system rotation on wall-bounded shear flows and has been studied a lot in the past. In the present work, a two-dimensional-three-component (2D/3C) model for RPPF is introduced and it is shown that the present model is equivalent to a thermal convection problem with unit Prandtl number. For low Reynolds number cases, the model can be used to study the stability behaviour of the roll cells. It is found that the neutral stability curves, critical eigensolutions and critical streamfunctions of RPPF at different rotation numbers ($Ro$) almost collapse with the help of a rescaling with a newly defined Rayleigh number $Ra$ and channel height $H$. Analytic expressions for the critical Reynolds number and critical wavenumber at different $Ro$ can be obtained. For a turbulent state with high Reynolds number, the 2D/3C model for RPPF is self-sustained even without extra excitations. Simulation results also show that the profiles of mean streamwise velocity and Reynolds shear stress from the 2D/3C model share the same linear laws as the fully three-dimensional cases, although differences on the intercepts can be observed. The contours of streamwise velocity fluctuations behave like plumes in the linear law region. We also provide an explanation to the linear mean velocity profiles observed at high rotation numbers.


2014 ◽  
Vol 761 ◽  
pp. 348-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Zammert ◽  
Bruno Eckhardt

AbstractWe study localised exact coherent structures in plane Poiseuille flow that are relative periodic orbits. They are obtained from extended states in smaller periodically continued domains, by increasing the length to obtain streamwise localisation and then by increasing the width to achieve spanwise localisation. The states maintain the travelling wave structure of the extended states, which is then modulated by a localised envelope on larger scales. In the streamwise direction, the envelope shows exponential localisation, with different exponents on the upstream and downstream sides. The upstream exponent increases linearly with Reynolds number $\mathit{Re}$, but the downstream exponent is essentially independent of $\mathit{Re}$. In the spanwise direction the decay is compatible with a power-law localisation. As the width increases the localised state undergoes further bifurcations which add additional unstable directions, so that the edge state, the relative attractor on the boundary between the laminar and turbulent motions, in the system becomes chaotic.


1972 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Green ◽  
C. H. Ellen

This paper examines the linear stability of antisymmetric disturbances in incompressible plane Poiseuille flow between identical flexible walls which undergo transverse displacements. Using a variational approach, an approximate solution of the problem is formulated in a form suitable for computational evaluation of the (complex) wave speeds of the system. A feature of this formulation is that the varying boundary conditions (and the Orr-Sommerfeld equation) are satisfied only in the mean; this reduces the labour involved in determining the approximate solution for a variety of wall conditions without increasing the difficulty of obtaining solutions to a given accuracy. In this paper the symmetric stream function distribution across the channel is represented by a series of cosines whose coefficients are determined by the variational solution. Comparisons with previous work, both for the flexible-wall and rigid-wall problems, show that the method gives results as accurate as those obtained previously by other methods while new results, for flexible walls, indicate the presence of a higher wave-number stability boundary which joins the distorted Tollmien-Schlichting stability boundary at lower wave-numbers. In some cases this upper unstable region, which is characterized by large amplification rates, may determine the critical Reynolds number of the system.


1968 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. S. Gage ◽  
W. H. Reid

In studying the stability of a thermally stratified fluid in the presence of a viscous shear flow, we have a situation in which there is an important interaction between the mechanism of instability due to the stratification and the Tollmien-Schlichting mechanism due to the shear. A complete analysis has been carried out for the Bénard problem in the presence of a plane Poiseuille flow and it is shown that, although Squire's transformation can be used to reduce the three-dimensional problem to an equivalent two-dimensional one, a theorem of Squire's type does not follow unless the Richardson number exceeds a certain small negative value. This conclusion follows from the fact that, when the stratification is unstable and the Prandtl number is unity, the equivalent two-dimensional problem becomes identical mathematically to the stability problem for spiral flow between rotating cylinders and, from the known results for the spiral flow problem, Squire's transformation can then be used to obtain the complete three-dimensional stability boundary. For the case of stable stratification, however, Squire's theorem is valid and the instability is of the usual Tollmien—Schlichting type. Additional calculations have been made for this case which show that the flow is completely stabilized when the Richardson number exceeds a certain positive value.


1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 1328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farid Alavyoon ◽  
Dan S. Henningson ◽  
P. Henrik Alfredsson

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