Triadic scale interactions in a turbulent boundary layer

2015 ◽  
Vol 767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subrahmanyam Duvvuri ◽  
Beverley J. McKeon

AbstractA formal relationship between the skewness and the correlation coefficient of large and small scales, termed the amplitude modulation coefficient, is established for a general statistically stationary signal and is analysed in the context of a turbulent velocity signal. Both the quantities are seen to be measures of phase in triadically consistent interactions between scales of turbulence. The naturally existing phase relationships between large and small scales in a turbulent boundary layer are then manipulated by exciting a synthetic large-scale motion in the flow using a spatially impulsive dynamic wall roughness perturbation. The synthetic scale is seen to alter the phase relationships, or the degree of modulation, in a quasi-deterministic manner by exhibiting a phase-organizing influence on the small scales. The results presented provide encouragement for the development of a practical framework for favourable manipulation of energetic small-scale turbulence through large-scale inputs in a wall-bounded turbulent flow.

1970 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie S. G. Kovasznay ◽  
Valdis Kibens ◽  
Ron F. Blackwelder

The outer intermittent region of a fully developed turbulent boundary layer with zero pressure gradient was extensively explored in the hope of shedding some light on the shape and motion of the interface separating the turbulent and non-turbulent regions as well as on the nature of the related large-scale eddies within the turbulent regime. Novel measuring techniques were devised, such as conditional sampling and conditional averaging, and others were turned to new uses, such as reorganizing in map form the space-time auto- and cross-correlation data involving both the U and V velocity components as well as I, the intermittency function. On the basis of the new experimental results, a conceptual model for the development of the interface and for the entrainment of new fluid is proposed.


The viscosity-dominated unsteady flow in a row of small transverse square cavities lying submerged in a turbulent boundary layer is first considered. Experiments performed primarily with one size of cavities show that the cavity flow can be excited by freestream disturbances in a narrow frequency band that is independent of the flow speed. The turbulent boundary layer in which the cavities are submerged remains transparent to the disturbances. The cavity flow resonates when the depths of the cavity and the Stokes layer are nearly the same, that is when 2π fk 2 / v = 1, where f is the frequency of the resonant cavity flow, k is the cavity height and v is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid. An associated laminar boundary-layer excitation experiment shows that the instability process over the grooved surface also involves the amplification of Tollmien–Schlichting (T–S) waves in much the same manner as in a smooth-wall Blasius profile but the grooves enhance receptivity. A theory is given proposing that the resonant groove flow in the low Reynolds number turbulent boundary layer is driven by highly amplified matched T–S waves. The possible relevance of the observed coupling between the large-scale freestream disturbances and the small-scale cavity flows to the turbulence production mechanism in a smooth flat-plate turbulent boundary layer is also discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 865 ◽  
pp. 1085-1109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yutaro Motoori ◽  
Susumu Goto

To understand the generation mechanism of a hierarchy of multiscale vortices in a high-Reynolds-number turbulent boundary layer, we conduct direct numerical simulations and educe the hierarchy of vortices by applying a coarse-graining method to the simulated turbulent velocity field. When the Reynolds number is high enough for the premultiplied energy spectrum of the streamwise velocity component to show the second peak and for the energy spectrum to obey the$-5/3$power law, small-scale vortices, that is, vortices sufficiently smaller than the height from the wall, in the log layer are generated predominantly by the stretching in strain-rate fields at larger scales rather than by the mean-flow stretching. In such a case, the twice-larger scale contributes most to the stretching of smaller-scale vortices. This generation mechanism of small-scale vortices is similar to the one observed in fully developed turbulence in a periodic cube and consistent with the picture of the energy cascade. On the other hand, large-scale vortices, that is, vortices as large as the height, are stretched and amplified directly by the mean flow. We show quantitative evidence of these scale-dependent generation mechanisms of vortices on the basis of numerical analyses of the scale-dependent enstrophy production rate. We also demonstrate concrete examples of the generation process of the hierarchy of multiscale vortices.


1997 ◽  
Vol 342 ◽  
pp. 263-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. S. SHAFI ◽  
R. A. ANTONIA

Measurements of the spanwise and wall-normal components of vorticity and their constituent velocity derivative fluctuations have been made in a turbulent boundary layer over a mesh-screen rough wall using a four-hot-wire vorticity probe. The measured spectra and variances of vorticity and velocity derivatives have been corrected for the effect of spatial resolution. The high-wavenumber behaviour of the spectra conforms closely with isotropy. Over most of the outer layer, the normalized magnitudes of the velocity derivative variances differ significantly from those over a smooth wall layer. The differences are such that the variances are much more nearly isotropic over the rough wall than on the smooth wall. This behaviour is consistent with earlier observations that the large-scale structure in this rough wall layer is more isotropic than that in a smooth wall layer. Isotropy-based approximations for the mean energy dissipation rate and mean enstrophy are consequently more reliable in this rough wall layer than in a smooth wall layer. In the outer layer, the vorticity variances are slightly larger than those over a smooth wall; reflecting structural differences between the two flows.


This paper reviews how Kolmogorov postulated for the first time the existence of a steady statistical state for small-scale turbulence, and its defining parameters of dissipation rate and kinematic viscosity. Thence he made quantitative predictions of the statistics by extending previous methods of dimensional scaling to multiscale random processes. We present theoretical arguments and experimental evidence to indicate when the small-scale motions might tend to a universal form (paradoxically not necessarily in uniform flows when the large scales are gaussian and isotropic), and discuss the implications for the kinematics and dynamics of the fact that there must be singularities in the velocity field associated with the - 5/3 inertial range spectrum. These may be particular forms of eddy or ‘eigenstructure’ such as spiral vortices, which may not be unique to turbulent flows. Also, they tend to lead to the notable spiral contours of scalars in turbulence, whose self-similar structure enables the ‘box-counting’ technique to be used to measure the ‘capacity’ D K of the contours themselves or of their intersections with lines, D' K . Although the capacity, a term invented by Kolmogorov (and studied thoroughly by Kolmogorov & Tikhomirov), is like the exponent 2 p of a spectrum in being a measure of the distribution of length scales ( D' K being related to 2 p in the limit of very high Reynolds numbers), the capacity is also different in that experimentally it can be evaluated at local regions within a flow and at lower values of the Reynolds number. Thus Kolmogorov & Tikhomirov provide the basis for a more widely applicable measure of the self-similar structure of turbulence. Finally, we also review how Kolmogorov’s concept of the universal spatial structure of the small scales, together with appropriate additional physical hypotheses, enables other aspects of turbulence to be understood at these scales; in particular the general forms of the temporal statistics such as the high-frequency (inertial range) spectra in eulerian and lagrangian frames of reference, and the perturbations to the small scales caused by non-isotropic, non-gaussian and inhomogeneous large-scale motions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 802 ◽  
pp. 79-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eda Dogan ◽  
Ronald E. Hanson ◽  
Bharathram Ganapathisubramani

The scale interactions occurring within a turbulent boundary layer are investigated in the presence of free-stream turbulence. The free-stream turbulence is generated by an active grid. The free stream is monitored by a single-component hot-wire probe, while a second probe is roved across the height of the boundary layer at the same streamwise location. Large-scale structures occurring in the free stream are shown to penetrate the boundary layer and increase the streamwise velocity fluctuations throughout. It is speculated that, depending on the extent of the penetration, i.e. based on the level of free-stream turbulence, the near-wall turbulence production peaks at different wall-normal locations than the expected location of $y^{+}\approx 15$ for a canonical turbulent boundary layer. It is shown that the large scales dominating the log region have a modulating effect on the small scales in the near-wall region; this effect becomes more significant with increasing turbulence in the free stream, i.e. similarly increasing $Re_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{0}}$. This modulating interaction and its Reynolds-number trend have similarities with canonical turbulent boundary layers at high Reynolds numbers where the interaction between the large scales and the envelope of the small scales exhibits a pure amplitude modulation (Hutchins & Marusic, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A, vol. 365 (1852), 2007, pp. 647–664; Mathis et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 628, 2009, pp. 311–337). This similarity has encouraging implications towards generalising scale interactions in turbulent boundary layers.


Entropy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenkang Wang ◽  
Chong Pan ◽  
Jinjun Wang

Low-speed streaks in wall-bounded turbulence are the dominant structures in the near-wall turbulent self-sustaining cycle. Existing studies have well characterized their spanwise spacing in the buffer layer and below. Recent studies suggested the existence of these small-scale structures in the higher layer where large-scale structures usually receive more attention. The present study is thus devoted to extending the understanding of the streak spacing to the log layer. An analysis is taken on two-dimensional (2D) wall-parallel velocity fields in a smooth-wall turbulent boundary layer with Ret = 4402400, obtained via either 2D Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurement taken here or public Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS). Morphological-based streak identification analysis yields a Re-independent log-normal distribution of the streak spacing till the upper bound of the log layer, based on which an empirical model is proposed to account for its wall-normal growth. The small-scale part of the spanwise spectra of the streamwise fluctuating velocity below y? = 100 is reasonably restored by a synthetic simulation that distributes elementary streak units based on the proposed empirical streak spacing model, which highlights the physical significance of streaks in shaping the small-scale part of the velocity spectra beyond the buffer layer.


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