Resolvent-based design and experimental testing of porous materials for passive turbulence control

An extended version of the resolvent formulation is used to evaluate the use of anisotropic porous materials as passive flow control devices for turbulent channel flow. The effect of these porous substrates is introduced into the governing equations via a generalized version of Darcy’s law. Model predictions show that materials with high streamwise permeability and low wall-normal permeability (${\varphi }_{\mathit{xy}}=k_{\mathit{xx}}/k_{\mathit{yy}}\gg 1$) can suppress resolvent modes resembling the energetic near-wall cycle. Based on these predictions, two anisotropic porous substrates with ${\varphi }_{\mathit{xy}}>1$ and ${\varphi }_{\mathit{xy}}<1$ were designed and fabricated for experiments in a benchtop water channel experiment. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements were used to compute mean turbulence statistics and to educe coherent structure via snapshot Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD). Friction velocity estimates based on the Reynolds shear stress profiles do not show evidence of discernible friction reduction (or increase) over the streamwise-preferential substrate with ${\varphi }_{\mathit{xy}}>1$ relative to a smooth wall flow at identical bulk Reynolds number. A significant increase in friction is observed over the substrate with ${\varphi }_{\mathit{xy}}<1$. This increase in friction is linked to the emergence of spanwise rollers resembling Kelvin–Helmholtz vortices. Coherent structures extracted via POD analysis show qualitative agreement with model predictions.     

Global stability analysis of a 90°-bend pipe flow

The present work investigates the stability properties of the flow in a 90°-bend pipe with curvature $\delta =R/R_c=1/3$, with R being the radius of the cross-section of the pipe and $R_c$ the radius of curvature at the pipe centreline. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) for values of the bulk Reynolds number ${\mathit{Re}}_b=U_{b}D/\nu$ between 2000 and 3000 are performed. The bulk Reynolds number is based on the bulk velocity $U_b$, the pipe diameter D, and the kinematic viscosity $\nu$. The flow is found to be steady for ${\mathit{Re}}_b⩽2500$, with two main pairs of symmetric, counter-rotating vortices in the section of the pipe downstream of the bend. The presence of two recirculation regions is detected inside the bend: one on the outer wall and the other on the inner side. For ${\mathit{Re}}_b⩾2550$, the flow exhibits a periodic behaviour, oscillating with a fundamental non-dimensional frequency $\mathit{St}=\mathit{fD}/U_b=0.23$. A global stability analysis is performed in order to determine the cause of the transition from the steady to the periodic regime. The spectrum of the linearised Navier-Stokes operator reveals a pair of complex conjugate eigenvalues with positive real part, hence the transition is ascribed to a Hopf bifurcation occurring at ${\mathit{Re}}_{b,\mathit{cr}}\approx 2531$, a value much lower than the critical Reynolds number for the flow in a torus with the same curvature. The velocity components of the unstable direct and adjoint eigenmodes are investigated, and they display a large spatial separation, most likely due to the non-normality of the linearised Navier-Stokes operator. Thus, the core of the instability, also known in the literature as the wavemaker, is sought performing an analysis of the structural sensitivity of the unstable eigenmode to spatially localised feedbacks. The region located 15° downstream of the bend inlet, on the outer wall, is the most receptive to this kind of perturbations, and thus corresponds to where the instability originates. Since this region coincides with the outer-wall separation bubble, it is concluded that the instability is linked to the strong shear by the backflow phenomena. The present results are relevant for technical applications where bent pipes are frequently used, and their stability properties have hitherto not been studied.     

Hairpin vortices in the largest scale of turbulent boundary layers

We have conducted direct numerical simulations of a turbulent boundary layer for the momentum-thickness-based Reynolds number ${\mathit{Re}}_{\theta }$ = 180–4600. To extract the largest-scale vortices, we coarse-grain the fluctuating velocity fields by using a Gaussian filter with the filter width comparable to the boundary layer thickness. Most of the largest-scale vortices identified by isosurfaces of the second invariant of the coarse-grained velocity gradient tensor are similar to coherent vortices observed in low-Reynolds-number regions, that is, hairpin vortices or quasi-streamwise vortices inclined to the wall. We also develop a percolation analysis to investigate the threshold-dependence of the isosurfaces and objectively identify the largest-scale hairpin vortices in terms of the coarse-grained vorticity, which leads to the quantitative evidence that they never disappear even in fully developed turbulent regions. Hence, we conclude that hairpin vortices exist in the largest-scale structures irrespective of the Reynolds number.     

Non-Darcian Bénard convection in eccentric annuli containing spherical particles

In this paper, a numerical investigation of natural convection in a porous medium confined by two horizontal eccentric cylinders is presented. The cylinders are impermeable to fluid motion and retained at uniform different temperatures. While, the annular porous layer is packed with glass spheres and fully-saturated with air, and the cylindrical packed bed is under the condition of local thermal non-equilibrium. The mathematical model describing the thermal and hydrodynamic phenomena consists of the two-phase energy model coupled by the Brinkman-Forchheimer-extended Darcy model under the Boussinesq approximation. The non-dimensional derived system of formulations is numerically discretised and solved using the spectral-element method. The investigation is conducted for a constant cylinder/particle diameter ratio ($D_i/d$) = 30, porosity ($\epsilon$) = 0.5, and solid/fluid thermal conductivity ratio ($k_r$) = 38.6. The effects of the vertical, horizontal and diagonal heat source eccentricity (−0.8 $⩽e⩽$0.8) and the annulus radius ratio (1.5 $⩽\mathit{RR}⩽$ 5.0) on the temperature and velocity distributions as well as the overall heat dissipation within both the fluid and solid phases, for a broad range of Rayleigh number (10⁴ $⩽$ Ra $⩽$ 8 $\times {10}^7$). The results show that uni-cellular, bi-cellular and tri-cellular flow regimes appear in the vertical eccentric annulus at the higher positive eccentricity e = 0.8 as Rayleigh number increases. However, in the diagonal eccentric annulus, the multi-cellular flow regimes are shown to be deformed and the isotherms are particularly distorted when Rayleigh number increases. In contrast, in the horizontal eccentric annulus, it is found that whatever the Rayleigh number is only an uni-cellular flow regime is seen. In addition, it is shown that the fluid flow is always unstable in the diagonal eccentric geometry at e = 0.8 for moderate and higher Rayleigh numbers. However, it loses its stability in the vertical eccentric geometry only at two particular cases, while it is always stable in the horizontal eccentric geometry, for all eccentricities and Rayleigh numbers.