Scaling of the near-wall layer beneath turbulent separated flow

This paper is a continuation of an earlier paper [P.E. Hancock, Velocity scales in the near-wall layer beneath reattaching turbulent separated and boundary layer flows, Eur. J. Mech. B Fluids 24 (2005) 425–438] in which it is proposed that each Reynolds stress has its own velocity scale. Two of these, $u_{\tau }^{\prime }$ and $w_{\tau }^{\prime }$, are directly related by definition to the r.m.s. of the wall-shear-stress fluctuations (${\tau }_x$ and ${\tau }_z$) in the streamwise and transverse directions. They are also velocity scales for the true dissipation of the turbulent kinetic energy and the Kolmogorov velocity and length scales at the surface. From asymptotic considerations it is shown that the other two scales are related to averages involving instantaneous gradients of wall-shear-stress fluctuations. The measurements, made using pulsed-wire anemometry into the viscous sublayer, show that $u_{\tau }^{\prime }$ and $w_{\tau }^{\prime }$ are also the velocity scales for the respective streamwise and transverse fourth-order velocity moments, together with the viscous velocity scale ($\nu /y$). Normalised, the fourth-order moments show an inner-layer-like behaviour independent of both position and direction, like that seen in the second-order moments [P.E. Hancock, Velocity scales in the near-wall layer beneath reattaching turbulent separated and boundary layer flows, Eur. J. Mech. B Fluids 24 (2005) 425–438]. However, not surprisingly, the third order moments exhibit an effect of mean shear, seen in the skewing of the probability distributions. Though not measured directly, the measurements imply the behaviour of the averaged products of fluctuations in wall-shear-stress and wall-pressure-gradient ($\overline{{\tau }_x\partial p/\partial x}$ and $\overline{{\tau }_z\partial p/\partial z}$). Normalised, they also are independent of position and direction. Some of the results presented apply more generally to the near-wall region beneath turbulent flow.     

A fourth order accurate finite volume scheme for numerical simulations of turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection in cylindrical containers

A finite volume scheme, which is based on fourth order accurate central differences in spatial directions and on a hybrid explicit/semi-implicit time stepping scheme, was developed to solve the incompressible Navier–Stokes and energy equations on cylindrical staggered grids. This includes a new fourth order accurate discretization of the velocity and temperature fields at the singularity of the cylindrical coordinate system and a new stability condition [J. Appl. Numer. Anal. Comput. Math. 1 (2004) 315–326]. The method was applied in direct numerical simulations of turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection for different Rayleigh numbers $\mathit{Ra}={10}^{\gamma }$, $\gamma =5\text{,}\dots \text{,}8$, in wide cylinders with the aspect ratios $a\equiv H/R=0.2$ and $a=0.4$ (where R denotes the radius and H – the height of the cylinder). To cite this article: O. Shishkina, C. Wagner, C. R. Mecanique 333 (2005).     

Stabilité de l'écoulement de Hartmann chauffé par le basStability of the Hartmann flow heated from below

A numerical study is conducted in order to determine the influence of a vertical magnetic field, the Reynolds number and a temperature stratification on the instabilities occurring in the Hartmann flow heated from below. For $\mathit{Pr}=0.001$ and $\mathit{Ha}?2.5$, the results show that the vertical magnetic field has a stabilizing effect on both transverse oscillatory travelling waves $(T)$ and longitudinal stationary rolls $(L)$. The temperature stratification is responsible of a destabilization of the transverse $(T)$ modes and the appearance of longitudinal $(L)$ modes non-existent for the isothermal Hartmann flow. Moreover, the extent of the domains of Re where the transverse modes $(T)$ prevail is found to narrow when Ha increases and to widen when Ra increases for a given value of Ha. On the other hand, for the $(L)$ modes, the extent of the domains of Re where they prevail increases when Ha grows. To cite this article: W. Fakhfakh et al., C. R. Mecanique 334 (2006).     

Scale-by-scale energy budget in a turbulent boundary layer over a rough wall

Hot-wire velocity measurements are carried out in a turbulent boundary layer over a rough wall consisting of transverse circular rods, with a ratio of 8 between the spacing (w) of two consecutive rods and the rod height (k). The pressure distribution around the roughness element is used to accurately measure the mean friction velocity ($U_{\tau }$) and the error in the origin. It is found that $U_{\tau }$ remained practically constant in the streamwise direction suggesting that the boundary layer over this surface is evolving in a self-similar manner. This is further corroborated by the similarity observed at all scales of motion, in the region $0.2⩽y/\delta ⩽0.6$, as reflected in the constancy of Reynolds number ($R_{\lambda }$) based on Taylor’s microscale and the collapse of Kolmogorov normalized velocity spectra at all wavenumbers.A scale-by-scale budget for the second-order structure function $〈{(\delta u)}^2〉$ ($\delta u=u(x+r)-u(x)$, where u is the fluctuating streamwise velocity component and r is the longitudinal separation) is carried out to investigate the energy distribution amongst different scales in the boundary layer. It is found that while the small scales are controlled by the viscosity, intermediate scales over which the transfer of energy (or $〈{(\delta u)}^3〉$) is important are affected by mechanisms induced by the large-scale inhomogeneities in the flow, such as production, advection and turbulent diffusion. For example, there are non-negligible contributions from the large-scale inhomogeneity to the budget at scales of the order of $\lambda$, the Taylor microscale, in the region of the boundary layer extending from $y/\delta =0.2$ to 0.6 ($\delta$ is the boundary layer thickness).