Influence of Reynolds number on characteristics of turbulent wall boundary layers

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Andreopoulos ◽  
F. Durst ◽  
Z. Zaric ◽  
J. Jovanovic
Author(s):  
Christian Eichler ◽  
Thomas Sattelmayer

Premixed combustion of hydrogen-rich mixtures involves the risk of flame flashback through wall boundary layers. For laminar flow conditions, the flashback mechanism is well understood and is usually correlated by a critical velocity gradient at the wall. Turbulent transport inside the boundary layer considerably increases the flashback propensity. Only tube burner setups have been investigated in the past and thus turbulent flashback limits were only derived for a fully-developed Blasius wall friction profile. For turbulent flows, details of the flame propagation in proximity to the wall remain unclear. This paper presents results from a new experimental combustion rig, apt for detailed optical investigations of flame flashbacks in a turbulent wall boundary layer developing on a flat plate and being subject to an adjustable pressure gradient. Turbulent flashback limits are derived from the observed flame position inside the measurement section. The fuels investigated cover mixtures of methane, hydrogen and air at various mixing ratios. The associated wall friction distributions are determined by RANS computations of the flow inside the measurement section with fully resolved boundary layers. Consequently, the interaction between flame back pressure and incoming flow is not taken into account explicitly, in accordance with the evaluation procedure used for tube burner experiments. The results are compared to literature values and the critical gradient concept is reviewed in light of the new data.


2019 ◽  
Vol 875 ◽  
pp. 44-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Blackman ◽  
Laurent Perret ◽  
Romain Mathis

Urban-type rough-wall boundary layers developing over staggered cube arrays with plan area packing density, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{p}$, of 6.25 %, 25 % or 44.4 % have been studied at two Reynolds numbers within a wind tunnel using hot-wire anemometry (HWA). A fixed HWA probe is used to capture the outer-layer flow while a second moving probe is used to capture the inner-layer flow at 13 wall-normal positions between $1.25h$ and $4h$ where $h$ is the height of the roughness elements. The synchronized two-point HWA measurements are used to extract the near-canopy large-scale signal using spectral linear stochastic estimation and a predictive model is calibrated in each of the six measurement configurations. Analysis of the predictive model coefficients demonstrates that the canopy geometry has a significant influence on both the superposition and amplitude modulation. The universal signal, the signal that exists in the absence of any large-scale influence, is also modified as a result of local canopy geometry suggesting that although the nonlinear interactions within urban-type rough-wall boundary layers can be modelled using the predictive model as proposed by Mathis et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 681, 2011, pp. 537–566), the model must be however calibrated for each type of canopy flow regime. The Reynolds number does not significantly affect any of the model coefficients, at least over the limited range of Reynolds numbers studied here. Finally, the predictive model is validated using a prediction of the near-canopy signal at a higher Reynolds number and a prediction using reference signals measured in different canopy geometries to run the model. Statistics up to the fourth order and spectra are accurately reproduced demonstrating the capability of the predictive model in an urban-type rough-wall boundary layer.


2019 ◽  
Vol 862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Meyers ◽  
Bharathram Ganapathisubramani ◽  
Raúl Bayoán Cal

In rough-wall boundary layers, wall-parallel non-homogeneous mean-flow solutions exist that lead to so-called dispersive velocity components and dispersive stresses. They play a significant role in the mean-flow momentum balance near the wall, but typically disappear in the outer layer. A theoretical framework is presented to study the decay of dispersive motions in the outer layer. To this end, the problem is formulated in Fourier space, and a set of governing ordinary differential equations per mode in wavenumber space is derived by linearizing the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations around a constant background velocity. With further simplifications, analytically tractable solutions are found consisting of linear combinations of $\exp (-kz)$ and $\exp (-Kz)$, with $z$ the wall distance, $k$ the magnitude of the horizontal wavevector $\boldsymbol{k}$, and where $K(\boldsymbol{k},Re)$ is a function of $\boldsymbol{k}$ and the Reynolds number $Re$. Moreover, for $k\rightarrow \infty$ or $k_{1}\rightarrow 0$ (with $k_{1}$ the stream-wise wavenumber), $K\rightarrow k$ is found, in which case solutions consist of a linear combination of $\exp (-kz)$ and $z\exp (-kz)$, and are independent of the Reynolds number. These analytical relations are compared in the limit of $k_{1}=0$ to the rough boundary layer experiments by Vanderwel & Ganapathisubramani (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 774, 2015, R2) and are in reasonable agreement for $\ell _{k}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}\leqslant 0.5$, with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}$ the boundary-layer thickness and $\ell _{k}=2\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}/k$.


1991 ◽  
Vol 230 ◽  
pp. 1-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln P. Erm ◽  
Peter N. Joubert

An investigation was undertaken to improve our understanding of low-Reynolds-number turbulent boundary layers flowing over a smooth flat surface in nominally zero pressure gradients. In practice, such flows generally occur in close proximity to a tripping device and, though it was known that the flows are affected by the actual low value of the Reynolds number, it was realized that they may also be affected by the type of tripping device used and variations in free-stream velocity for a given device. Consequently, the experimental programme was devised to investigate systematically the effects of each of these three factors independently. Three different types of device were chosen: a wire, distributed grit and cylindrical pins. Mean-flow, broadband-turbulence and spectral measurements were taken, mostly for values of Rθ varying between about 715 and about 2810. It was found that the mean-flow and broadband-turbulence data showed variations with Rθ, as expected. Spectra were plotted using scaling given by Perry, Henbest & Chong (1986) and were compared with their models which were developed for high-Reynolds-number flows. For the turbulent wall region, spectra showed reasonably good agreement with their model. For the fully turbulent region, spectra did show some appreciable deviations from their model, owing to low-Reynolds-number effects. Mean-flow profiles, broadband-turbulence profiles and spectra were found to be affected very little by the type of device used for Rθ ≈ 1020 and above, indicating an absence of dependence on flow history for this Rθ range. These types of measurements were also compared at both Rθ ≈ 1020 and Rθ ≈ 2175 to see if they were dependent on how Rθ was formed (i.e. the combination of velocity and momentum thickness used to determine Rθ). There were noticeable differences for Rθ ≈ 1020, but these differences were only convincing for the pins, and there was a general overall improvement in agreement for Rθ ≈ 2175.


2015 ◽  
Vol 771 ◽  
pp. 303-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Vallikivi ◽  
B. Ganapathisubramani ◽  
A. J. Smits

One-dimensional energy spectra in flat plate zero pressure gradient boundary layers and pipe flows are examined over a wide range of Reynolds numbers ($2600\leqslant \mathit{Re}_{{\it\tau}}\leqslant 72\,500$). The spectra show excellent collapse with Kolmogorov scaling at high wavenumbers for both flows at all Reynolds numbers. The peaks associated with the large-scale motions (LSMs) and superstructures (SS) in boundary layers behave as they do in pipe flows, with some minor differences. The location of the outer spectral peak, associated with SS or very large-scale motions (VLSMs) in the turbulent wall region, displays only a weak dependence on Reynolds number, and it occurs at the same wall-normal distance where the variances establish a logarithmic behaviour and where the amplitude modulation coefficient has a zero value. The results suggest that with increasing Reynolds number the energy is largely confined to a thin wall layer that continues to diminish in physical extent. The outer-scaled wavelength of the outer spectral peak appears to decrease with increasing Reynolds number. However, there is still significant energy content in wavelengths associated with the SS and VLSMs. The location of the outer spectral peak appears to mark the start of a plateau that is consistent with a $k_{x}^{-1}$ slope in the spectrum and the logarithmic variation in the variances. This $k_{x}^{-1}$ region seems to occur when there is sufficient scale separation between the locations of the outer spectral peak and the outer edge of the log region. It does not require full similarity between outer and wall-normal scaling on the wavenumber. The extent of $k_{x}^{-1}$ region depends on the wavelength of the outer spectral peak (${\it\lambda}_{OSP}$), which appears to emerge as a new length scale for the log region. Finally, based on the observations from the spectra together with the statistics presented in Vallikivi et al. (J. Fluid Mech., 2015 (submitted)), five distinct wall-normal layers are identified in turbulent wall flows.


Author(s):  
Christian Eichler ◽  
Thomas Sattelmayer

Premixed combustion of hydrogen-rich mixtures involves the risk of flame flashback through wall boundary layers. For laminar flow conditions, the flashback mechanism is well understood and is usually correlated by a critical velocity gradient at the wall. Turbulent transport inside the boundary layer considerably increases the flashback propensity. Only tube burner setups were investigated in the past, and thus turbulent flashback limits were only derived for a fully developed Blasius wall friction profile. For turbulent flows, details of the flame propagation in proximity to the wall remain unclear. This paper presents results from a new experimental combustion rig, apt for detailed optical investigations of flame flashbacks in a turbulent wall boundary layer developing on a flat plate and being subject to an adjustable pressure gradient. Turbulent flashback limits are derived from the observed flame position inside the measurement section. The fuels investigated cover mixtures of methane, hydrogen, and air at various mixing ratios. The associated wall friction distributions are determined by Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) computations of the flow inside the measurement section with fully resolved boundary layers. Consequently, the interaction between flame back pressure and incoming flow is not taken into account explicitly, in accordance with the evaluation procedure used for tube burner experiments. The results are compared with literature values, and the critical gradient concept is reviewed in light of the new data.


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