scholarly journals The Origin of Turbulent Spots

Author(s):  
Mark W. Johnson ◽  
Antonis Dris

It has been suggested that a turbulent spot is formed when a transient separation occurs in the laminar boundary layer and this criterion has been successfully used by Johnson and Ercan [1996,1997] to predict bypass transition for boundary layers subjected to a wide range of freestream turbulence levels and streamwise pressure gradients. In the current paper experimental results are presented which support the premise that the formation of turbulent spots is associated with transient separation. Near wall hot wire signals in laminar and transitional boundary layers are analysed statistically to produce probability distributions for signal level and trough frequency. In the laminar period the signal level is normally distributed, but during the inter-turbulent periods in the transitional boundary layer the distribution is truncated at the tower end, i.e. the lowest velocity periods in the signal disappear, suggesting that these are replaced during transition by the turbulent periods. The number of these events (troughs) also correlates with the number of turbulent spots during early transition. A linear perturbation theory is also used in the paper to compute the streamlines through a turbulent spot and its associated calmed region. The results indicate that a hairpin vortex dominates the flow and entrains a low momentum fluid stream from upstream with a high momentum stream from downstream and then ejects the combined stream into the turbulent spot. The hairpin can only exist if a local separation occurs beneath its nose and the current results suggest that this separation is induced when the instantaneous velocity in the near wall signal drops below 50% of the mean.

1999 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. W. Johnson ◽  
A. Dris

It has been suggested that a turbulent spot is formed when a transient separation occurs in the laminar boundary layer and this criterion has been successfully used by Johnson and Ercan (1996, ASME Paper No. 96-GT-44; 1997, ASME Paper No. 97-GT-475) to predict bypass transition for boundary layers subjected to a wide range of free-stream turbulence levels and streamwise pressure gradients. In the current paper experimental results are presented that support the premise that the formation of turbulent spots is associated with transient separation. Near-wall hot-wire signals in laminar and transitional boundary layers are analyzed statistically to produce probability distributions for signal level and trough frequency. In the laminar period the signal level is normally distributed, but during the inter-turbulent periods in the transitional boundary layer, the distribution is truncated at the lower end, i.e., the lowest velocity periods in the signal disappear, suggesting that these are replaced during transition by the turbulent periods. The number of these events (troughs) also correlates with the number of turbulent spots during early transition. A linear perturbation theory is also used in the paper to compute the streamlines through a turbulent spot and its associated calmed region. The results indicate that a hairpin vortex dominates the flow and entrains a low-momentum fluid stream from upstream with a high-momentum stream from downstream and then ejects the combined stream into the turbulent spot. The hairpin can only exist if a local separation occurs beneath its nose and the current results suggest that this separation is induced when the instantaneous velocity in the near-wall signal drops below 50 percent of the mean. [S0889-504X(00)01001-1]


2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (27) ◽  
pp. E5292-E5299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaohua Wu ◽  
Parviz Moin ◽  
James M. Wallace ◽  
Jinhie Skarda ◽  
Adrián Lozano-Durán ◽  
...  

Two observations drawn from a thoroughly validated direct numerical simulation of the canonical spatially developing, zero-pressure gradient, smooth, flat-plate boundary layer are presented here. The first is that, for bypass transition in the narrow sense defined herein, we found that the transitional–turbulent spot inception mechanism is analogous to the secondary instability of boundary-layer natural transition, namely a spanwise vortex filament becomes aΛvortex and then, a hairpin packet. Long streak meandering does occur but usually when a streak is infected by a nearby existing transitional–turbulent spot. Streak waviness and breakdown are, therefore, not the mechanisms for the inception of transitional–turbulent spots found here. Rather, they only facilitate the growth and spreading of existing transitional–turbulent spots. The second observation is the discovery, in the inner layer of the developed turbulent boundary layer, of what we call turbulent–turbulent spots. These turbulent–turbulent spots are dense concentrations of small-scale vortices with high swirling strength originating from hairpin packets. Although structurally quite similar to the transitional–turbulent spots, these turbulent–turbulent spots are generated locally in the fully turbulent environment, and they are persistent with a systematic variation of detection threshold level. They exert indentation, segmentation, and termination on the viscous sublayer streaks, and they coincide with local concentrations of high levels of Reynolds shear stress, enstrophy, and temperature fluctuations. The sublayer streaks seem to be passive and are often simply the rims of the indentation pockets arising from the turbulent–turbulent spots.


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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-48
Author(s):  
LMBC Campos ◽  
C Legendre

In this study, the propagation of waves in a two-dimensional parallel-sided nozzle is considered allowing for the combination of: (a) distinct impedances of the upper and lower walls; (b) upper and lower boundary layers with different thicknesses with linear shear velocity profiles matched to a uniform core flow; and (c) a uniform cross-flow as a bias flow out of one and into the other porous acoustic liner. The model involves an “acoustic triple deck” consisting of third-order non-sinusoidal non-plane acoustic-shear waves in the upper and lower boundary layers coupled to convected plane sinusoidal acoustic waves in the uniform core flow. The acoustic modes are determined from a dispersion relation corresponding to the vanishing of an 8 × 8 matrix determinant, and the waveforms are combinations of two acoustic and two sets of three acoustic-shear waves. The eigenvalues are calculated and the waveforms are plotted for a wide range of values of the four parameters of the problem, namely: (i/ii) the core and bias flow Mach numbers; (iii) the impedances at the two walls; and (iv) the thicknesses of the two boundary layers relative to each other and the core flow. It is shown that all three main physical phenomena considered in this model can have a significant effect on the wave field: (c) a bias or cross-flow even with small Mach number [Formula: see text] relative to the mean flow Mach number [Formula: see text] can modify the waveforms; (b) the possibly dissimilar impedances of the lined walls can absorb (or amplify) waves more or less depending on the reactance and inductance; (a) the exchange of the wave energy with the shear flow is also important, since for the same stream velocity, a thin boundary layer has higher vorticity, and lower vorticity corresponds to a thicker boundary layer. The combination of all these three effects (a–c) leads to a large set of different waveforms in the duct that are plotted for a wide range of the parameters (i–iv) of the problem.


2018 ◽  
Vol 856 ◽  
pp. 135-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. T. Salesky ◽  
W. Anderson

A number of recent studies have demonstrated the existence of so-called large- and very-large-scale motions (LSM, VLSM) that occur in the logarithmic region of inertia-dominated wall-bounded turbulent flows. These regions exhibit significant streamwise coherence, and have been shown to modulate the amplitude and frequency of small-scale inner-layer fluctuations in smooth-wall turbulent boundary layers. In contrast, the extent to which analogous modulation occurs in inertia-dominated flows subjected to convective thermal stratification (low Richardson number) and Coriolis forcing (low Rossby number), has not been considered. And yet, these parameter values encompass a wide range of important environmental flows. In this article, we present evidence of amplitude modulation (AM) phenomena in the unstably stratified (i.e. convective) atmospheric boundary layer, and link changes in AM to changes in the topology of coherent structures with increasing instability. We perform a suite of large eddy simulations spanning weakly ($-z_{i}/L=3.1$) to highly convective ($-z_{i}/L=1082$) conditions (where$-z_{i}/L$is the bulk stability parameter formed from the boundary-layer depth$z_{i}$and the Obukhov length $L$) to investigate how AM is affected by buoyancy. Results demonstrate that as unstable stratification increases, the inclination angle of surface layer structures (as determined from the two-point correlation of streamwise velocity) increases from$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}\approx 15^{\circ }$for weakly convective conditions to nearly vertical for highly convective conditions. As$-z_{i}/L$increases, LSMs in the streamwise velocity field transition from long, linear updrafts (or horizontal convective rolls) to open cellular patterns, analogous to turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection. These changes in the instantaneous velocity field are accompanied by a shift in the outer peak in the streamwise and vertical velocity spectra to smaller dimensionless wavelengths until the energy is concentrated at a single peak. The decoupling procedure proposed by Mathiset al.(J. Fluid Mech., vol. 628, 2009a, pp. 311–337) is used to investigate the extent to which amplitude modulation of small-scale turbulence occurs due to large-scale streamwise and vertical velocity fluctuations. As the spatial attributes of flow structures change from streamwise to vertically dominated, modulation by the large-scale streamwise velocity decreases monotonically. However, the modulating influence of the large-scale vertical velocity remains significant across the stability range considered. We report, finally, that amplitude modulation correlations are insensitive to the computational mesh resolution for flows forced by shear, buoyancy and Coriolis accelerations.


Author(s):  
Ashley D. Scillitoe ◽  
Paul G. Tucker ◽  
Paolo Adami

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is used to explore the boundary layer transition mechanisms in two rectilinear compressor cascades. To reduce numerical dissipation, a novel locally adaptive smoothing scheme is added to an unstructured finite-volume solver. The performance of a number of Sub-Grid Scale (SGS) models is explored. With the first cascade, numerical results at two different freestream turbulence intensities (Ti’s), 3.25% and 10%, are compared. At both Ti’s, time-averaged skin-friction and pressure coefficient distributions agree well with previous Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS). At Ti = 3.25%, separation induced transition occurs on the suction surface, whilst it is bypassed on the pressure surface. The pressure surface transition is dominated by modes originating from the convection of Tollmien-Schlichting waves by Klebanoff streaks. However, they do not resembled a classical bypass transition. Instead, they display characteristics of the “overlap” and “inner” transition modes observed in the previous DNS. At Ti = 10%, classical bypass transition occurs, with Klebanoff streaks incepting turbulent spots. With the second cascade, the influence of unsteady wakes on transition is examined. Wake-amplified Klebanoff streaks were found to instigate turbulent spots, which periodically shorten the suction surface separation bubble. The celerity line corresponding to 70% of the free-stream velocity, which is associated with the convection speed of the amplified Klebanoff streaks, was found to be important.


2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yousef Kanani ◽  
Sumanta Acharya ◽  
Forrest Ames

Abstract High Reynolds flow over a nozzle guide-vane with elevated inflow turbulence was simulated using wall-resolved large eddy simulation (LES). The simulations were undertaken at an exit Reynolds number of 0.5 × 106 and inflow turbulence levels of 0.7% and 7.9% and for uniform heat-flux boundary conditions corresponding to the measurements of Varty and Ames (2016, “Experimental Heat Transfer Distributions Over an Aft Loaded Vane With a Large Leading Edge at Very High Turbulence Levels,” ASME Paper No. IMECE2016-67029). The predicted heat transfer distribution over the vane is in excellent agreement with measurements. At higher freestream turbulence, the simulations accurately capture the laminar heat transfer augmentation on the pressure surface and the transition to turbulence on the suction surface. The bypass transition on the suction surface is preceded by boundary layer streaks formed under the external forcing of freestream disturbances which breakdown to turbulence through inner-mode secondary instabilities. Underneath the locally formed turbulent spot, heat transfer coefficient spikes and generally follows the same pattern as the turbulent spot. The details of the flow and temperature fields on the suction side are characterized, and first- and second-order statistics are documented. The turbulent Prandtl number in the boundary layer is generally in the range of 0.7–1, but decays rapidly near the wall.


Author(s):  
K. Funazaki ◽  
Y. Wakita ◽  
T. Otsuki

This study aims at clarification of wake-induced bypass transition process of a boundary layer on a flat plate with no pressure gradient. Special attention is paid to inception as well as growth of a turbulent spot created by the incoming wake as an external disturbance. To meet this goal a unique wake generator is invented to create an isolated turbulent spot. A multi-probe sensor with seven single-hot-wire probes is used to measure wake-affected boundary layer. The wake generator consists of a disk, pillars and a very thin wire with a small sphere on it. The sphere on the wire generates periodic wakes behind it when it passes across the main flow in front of the test flat plate. These sphere wakes impinge the flat plate in a spatially and timewisely localized manner so that the wakes periodically leave narrow affected zones inside the boundary layer. The observations confirm that an isolated turbulence spot emerges from each of those wake-affected zones. It is also found that the turbulent spot observed in this study bears a close resemblance to the conventional turbulent spot that takes a shape of arrowhead pointing downstream.


Author(s):  
Mark W. Johnson

A numerical procedure for predicting the receptivity of laminar boundary layers to freestream turbulence, consisting of vortex arrays with arbitrary orientation, has been developed previously. In the current paper this method is refined to improve accuracy using an unstructured computational grid. Results show that boundary layers only have high receptivity to a narrow band of normal and spanwise frequencies. The computed near wall gains have similar values to those obtained by experiment for zero pressure gradient boundary layers. Near wall gains are also obtained for a wide range of favourable and adverse pressure gradients for both attached and separated boundary layers. The gain values are used to predict start of transition values which are in reasonable agreement with Reθ values which are in reasonable agreement with the Abu-Ghannam and Shaw correlations. The current results extend transition inception prediction into the separated flow regime.


2008 ◽  
Vol 612 ◽  
pp. 81-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. R. SABATINO ◽  
C. R. SMITH

The properties of artificially initiated turbulent spots over a heated plate were investigated in a water channel. The instantaneous velocity field and surface Stanton number were simultaneously established using a technique that combines particle image velocimetry and thermochromic liquid crystal thermography. Several characteristics of a spot are found to be similar to those of a turbulent boundary layer. The spacing of the surface heat transfer streak patterns within the middle or ‘body’ of a turbulent spot are comparable to the low-speed streak spacing within a turbulent boundary layer. Additionally, the surface shear stress in the same region of a spot is also found to be comparable to a turbulent boundary layer. However, despite these similarities, the heat transfer within the spot body is found to be markedly less than the heat transfer for a turbulent boundary layer. In fact, the highest surface heat transfer occurs at the trailing or calmed region of a turbulent spot, regardless of maturity. Using a modified set of similarity coordinates, instantaneous two-dimensional streamlines suggest that turbulent spots entrain and subsequently recirculate warm surface fluid, thereby reducing the effective heat transfer within the majority of the spot. It is proposed that energetic vortices next to the wall, near the trailing edge of the spot body, are able to generate the highest surface heat transfer because they have the nearest access to cooler free-stream fluid.


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