Assessment of the shear-improved Smagorinsky model in laminar-turbulent transitional channel flow

In this paper, the shear-improved Smagorinsky model (SISM) is assessed in a K-type transitional channel flow. Our numerical simulation results show that the original SISM model is still too dissipative to predict the transitional channel flow. Two former reported empirical correction approaches, including a low-Reynolds-number correction and a shape-factor-based intermittency correction, are applied to further promote the capability of the SISM model in simulating the transition process. Numerical tests show that the shape-factor-based intermittency correction approach can correctly improve the transition-prediction capability of the SISM model, while the low-Reynolds-number correction approach fails. Furthermore, the shape-factor-based intermittency-corrected SISM model can capture the vortical structures during the transitional process very well and possesses the grid-insensitive characteristics.     

Drag reduction in turbulent channel flow using bidirectional wavy Lorentz force

Turbulent control and drag reduction in a channel flow via a bidirectional traveling wave induced by spanwise oscillating Lorentz force have been investigated in the paper. The results based on the direct numerical simulation (DNS) indicate that the bidirectional wavy Lorentz force with appropriate control parameters can result in a regular decline of near-wall streaks and vortex structures with respect to the flow direction, leading to the effective suppression of turbulence generation and significant reduction in skin-friction drag. In addition, experiments are carried out in a water tunnel via electro-magnetic (EM) actuators designed to produce the bidirectional traveling wave excitation as described in calculations. As a result, the actual substantial drag reduction is realized successfully in these experiments.     

Burst detection in turbulent channel flows based on large eddy simulation databases

As one of the important coherent structures in the near-wall region, turbulent burst is responsible for the production and transport of major turbulent kinetic energy and Rey- nolds stress[1]. Nearly half of turbulent kinetic energy or Reynolds stress is produced in the near-wall region, and 80% flows in outer region only contribute 20% of them. Both ejection and sweeping events contribute 60―70% of the turbulent shear stress respec- tively[2]. Recently, turbulent burst process has been foun…     

POD-based wall boundary conditions for the numerical simulation of turbulent channel flows

Simulation of turbulent wall-bounded flows requires a high spatial resolution in the wall region, which limits the range of Reynolds numbers which can be effectively reached. In previous work, we proposed proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) based wall boundary conditions to bypass the simulation of the inner wall region. Tests were carried out for direct numerical simulation at a low Reynolds number Re_τ = 180. The boundary condition is based on the POD spatial eigenfunctions which are determined a priori in the full channel. It consists of a three-component velocity field on the plane y⁺ = 50 which is reconstructed at each instant from a combination of selected eigenfunctions. The coefficients of the combination are estimated from the simulation in the reduced domain using the threshold-based reconstruction method described in Podvin et al. The study is now extended to large-eddy simulation at higher Reynolds numbers Re_τ = 295 and Re_τ = 590. Two versions of the reconstruction method are considered. In the first version, both the phases and the moduli of the coefficients are allowed to vary. In the second version, only the phases are adjusted. We find that the latter method is associated with improved statistics and is relatively robust with respect to the reconstruction threshold. However, it is sensitive to the details of the numerical simulation, unlike the former method, which is associated with less accurate statistics and is more dependent on the reconstruction threshold.     

Strengthened opposition control for skin-friction reduction in wall-bounded turbulent flows

An opposition control scheme with strengthened control input is proposed and tested in turbulent channel flows at friction Reynolds number Re_τ = 180 by direct numerical simulations. When the detection plane is located at less than 20 wall units, the drag reduction rate can be greatly enhanced by increasing the control amplitude parameter. The maximum drag reduction rate achieved in the present study is around 33%, which is much higher than the best value of 25% reported in literature. The strengthened control can be more efficient to attain a given drag reduction rate. Based on the total shear stress at the virtual wall established between the real wall and the detection plane by the control, a new friction velocity is proposed and the corresponding coordinate transform is made. Scaled by the proposed friction velocity, the wall-normal velocity fluctuation and the Reynolds shear stress of the controlled flows are collapsed well with those of the uncontrolled flow in the new coordinate. Based on the similarity, a relation between drag reduction rate and the effectiveness of the virtual wall is deduced, which disclosed that the elevation and residual Reynolds shear stress at the virtual wall are the key parameters to determine the drag reduction rate. The conclusion are also validated at Re_τ = 395 and 590. The decrease of the drag reduction rate with the increase of the Reynolds number is attributed to the enhanced residual Reynolds shear stress at the virtual wall.     

Large-eddy simulations of temporally accelerating turbulent channel flow

The unsteady turbulent channel flow subject to the temporal acceleration is considered in this study. Large-eddy simulations were performed to study the response of the turbulent flow to the temporal acceleration. The simulations were started with the fully developed turbulent channel flow at an initial Reynolds number of Re₀ = 3500 (based on the channel half-height and the bulk-mean velocity), and then a constant temporal acceleration was applied. During the acceleration, the Reynolds number of the channel flow increased linearly from the initial Reynolds number to the final Reynolds number of Re₁ = 22,600. The effect of grid resolution, domain size, time step size on the simulation results was assessed in a preliminary study using simulations of the accelerating turbulent flow as well as simulations of the steady turbulent channel flow at various Reynolds numbers. Simulation parameters were carefully chosen from the preliminary study to ascertain the accuracy of the simulation. From the accelerating turbulent flow simulations, the delays in the response of various flow properties to the temporal acceleration were measured. The distinctive features of the delays responsible for turbulence production, energy redistribution, and radial propagation were identified. Detailed turbulence statistics including the wall shear stress response during the acceleration were examined. The results reveal the changes in the near-wall structures during the acceleration. A self-sustaining mechanism of turbulence is proposed to explain the response of the turbulent flow to the temporal acceleration. Although the overall flow characteristics are similar between the channel and pipe flows, some differences were observed between the two flows.     

Bifurcation phenomena and control for magnetohydrodynamic flows in a smooth expanded channel

This work reports the effects of magnetic field on an electrically conducting fluid with low electrical conductivity flowing in a smooth expanded channel. The governing nonlinear magnetohydrodynamic （MHD） equations in induction- free situations are derived in the framework of MHD approximations and solved numerically using the finite-difference technique. The critical values of Reynolds number （based on upstream mean velocity and channel height） for symmetry breaking bifurcation for a sudden expansion channel （1：4） is about 36, whereas the value in the case of the smooth expansion geometry used in this work is obtained as 298, approximately （non-magnetic case）. The flow of an electrically conducting fluid in the presence of an externally applied constant magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of the flow is reduced significantly depending on the magnetic parameter （M）. It is expansion （1：4） is about 475 for the magnetic parameter M found that the critical value of Reynolds number for smooth = 2. The separating regions developed behind the smooth symmetric expansion are decreased in length for increasing values of the magnetic parameter. The bifurcation diagram is shown for a symmetric smoothly expanding channel. It is noted that the critical values of Reynolds number increase with increasing magnetic field strength.     

Large-eddy simulation of plane channel flow with Vreman's model

In this paper, large-eddy simulations of Vreman's model (VM) have been carried out to investigate its performances in a temporal transitional channel flow and in high Reynolds number turbulent channel flows. As a preliminary work, it is found that cubic root of the cell volume is the best choice of filter width for both VM and dynamic VM based on Germano identity (DVM), according to comparative studies and a-posteriori analyses at Re_τ = 590. VM and DVM are then used to simulate the temporal laminar–turbulent transitional channel flow, and the results turn out that VM and DVM are capable to simulate this temporal transient flow. In simulating high Reynolds number turbulent channel flows with a relatively coarse grid resolution, DVM itself shares the same weakness as the dynamic Smagorinsky model, while it can successfully predict the mean velocity profile and skin friction coefficient when it is coupled with the constrained large eddy simulation methodology. The coupling highly promotes the capability of Vreman's model, offering a new promising approach to simulate high Reynolds number wall-bounded turbulent flows.     

Vertical rotation effect on turbulence characteristics in an open channel flow

This paper solves the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation by a fractional-step method with the Reynolds number Reτ=194 and the rotation number Nτ=0-0.12. When Nτ is less than 0.06, the turbulence statistics relevant to the spanwise velocity fluctuation are enhanced, but other statistics are suppressed. When Nτ is larger than 0.06, all the turbulence statistics decrease significantly. Reynolds stress budgets elucidate that turbulence kinetic energy in the vertical direction is transferred into the streamwise and spanwise directions. The flow structures exhibit that the bursting processes near the bottom wall are ejected toward the free surface. Evident change of near-surface streak structures of the velocity fluctuations are revealed.     

Non-equilibrium dynamical phases of the two-atom Dicke model

In this paper, we investigate the non-equilibrium dynamical phases of the two-atom Dicke model, which can be realized in a two species Bose–Einstein condensate interacting with a single light mode in an optical cavity. Apart from the usual non-equilibrium normal and inverted phases, a non-equilibrium mixed phase is possible which is a combination of normal and inverted phase. A new kind of dynamical phase transition is predicted from non-superradiant mixed phase to the superradiant phase which can be achieved by tuning the two different atom–photon couplings. We also show that a dynamical phase transition from the non-superradiant mixed phase to the superradiant phase is forbidden for certain values of the two atom–photon coupling strengths.     

A Reynolds stress model for turbulent flows of viscoelastic fluids

A second-order closure is developed for predicting turbulent flows of viscoelastic fluids described by a modified generalised Newtonian fluid model incorporating a nonlinear viscosity that depends on a strain-hardening Trouton ratio as a means to handle some of the effects of viscoelasticity upon turbulent flows. Its performance is assessed by comparing its predictions for fully developed turbulent pipe flow with experimental data for four different dilute polymeric solutions and also with two sets of direct numerical simulation data for fluids theoretically described by the finitely extensible nonlinear elastic – Peterlin model. The model is based on a Newtonian Reynolds stress closure to predict Newtonian fluid flows, which incorporates low Reynolds number damping functions to properly deal with wall effects and to provide the capability to handle fluid viscoelasticity more effectively. This new turbulence model was able to capture well the drag reduction of various viscoelastic fluids over a wide range of Reynolds numbers and performed better than previously developed models for the same type of constitutive equation, even if the streamwise and wall-normal turbulence intensities were underpredicted.     

Inherent mechanism of breakdown in laminar-turbulent transition of plane channel flows

We will first list some known facts of transition and turbulence, and then analyze results from direct numerical simulations done for the transition of plane channel flows, thus revealing the key mechanism of breakdown. 1 Arguments based on known facts A superficial reason for the fact that the change of mean flow profile plays the key role in transition is that the mean flow profiles for laminar and turbulent flow are drasti- cally different. But this does not provide the inherent mechanism o…     

Geotropic tracers in turbulent flows: a proxy for fluid acceleration

We investigate the statistics of orientation of small, neutrally buoyant, spherical tracers whose centre of mass is displaced from the geometrical centre. If appropriate-sized particles are considered, a linear relation can be derived between the horizontal components of the orientation vector and the same components of acceleration. Direct numerical simulations are carried out, showing that such relation can be used to reconstruct the statistics of acceleration fluctuations up to the order of the gravitational acceleration. Based on such results, we suggest a novel method for the local experimental measurement of accelerations in turbulent flows.     

The self-similarity of wall-bounded temporally accelerating turbulent flows

From the study of viscous flow it is known that certain time-dependent laminar problems, such as the impulsively started flat plate and the diffusion of a vortex sheet, possess self-similar solutions. Previous studies of turbulent channel and pipe flows accelerating between two steady states have shown that the flow field evolves in three distinct stages. Furthermore, recent direct numerical simulations have shown that the perturbation velocity, i.e. the surplus velocity from the initial value, in an impulsively accelerating turbulent channel and pipe flow also possesses a self-similar distribution during the initial stage. In here, these results are developed analytically and it is shown that accelerating flows in which the centreline velocity develops as U^∧_c(t) = U₀(t/t₀)^m will possess a self-similar velocity distribution during the initial stage. The displacement thickness of the perturbation velocity is shown to be dependent only on the type of acceleration, and not on the initial Reynolds number, the acceleration rate or the change in Reynolds number. The derived formulas are verified with good agreement against measurements performed in a linearly accelerating turbulent pipe flow and with data from channel flow simulations.     

Large-eddy simulation of turbulent channel flows with conservative IDO scheme

The resolution of a numerical scheme in both physical and Fourier spaces is one of the most important requirements to calculate turbulent flows. A conservative form of the interpolated differential operator (IDO-CF) scheme is a multi-moment Eulerian scheme in which point values and integrated average values are separately defined in one cell. Since the IDO-CF scheme using high-order interpolation functions is constructed with compact stencils, the boundary conditions are able to be treated as easy as the 2nd-order finite difference method (FDM). It is unique that the first-order spatial derivative of the point value is derived from the interpolation function with 4th-order accuracy and the volume averaged value is based on the exact finite volume formulation, so that the IDO-CF scheme has higher spectral resolution than conventional FDMs with 4th-order accuracy. The computational cost to calculate the first-order spatial derivative with non-uniform grid spacing is one-third of the 4th-order FDM. For a large-eddy simulation (LES), we use the coherent structure model (CSM) in which the model coefficient is locally obtained from a turbulent structure extracted from a second invariant of the velocity gradient tensor, and the model coefficient correctly satisfies asymptotic behaviors to walls.     

DNS of rotating and non-rotating turbulent flows with synthetic inlet conditions

In this paper, direct numerical simulations (DNS) are presented to understand the effects of the inlet conditions on the turbulent energy decay rate of isotropic turbulence. A perfect control of the inlet conditions cannot be achieved in realistic simulations reproducing the effects of a solid grid, which, on the other hand, is possible by adding to a uniform inlet velocity U ₀ analytical anisotropic single- or multiple-scale velocity disturbances. The single-scale simulations with different disturbances with a wave number κ show a scaling of the turbulent energy q versus x ₁/M with M=2π/κ. The energy decay rate m for multiple-scale disturbances is decreased compared to the case with single-scale disturbances. The transition from anisotropic to isotropic turbulence is analysed through the evolution of the statistics, in particular, those linked to the flow structures. Flow visualisations of the vorticity field and joint of the velocity components at different distances from the inlet illuminate the reasons for the differences between single- and multiple-scale disturbances. The reduction of m, for the latter, indicates the way to generate isotropic turbulence at high microscale R _λ. Simulations at different rates of solid-body rotation aligned with the streamwise direction were also performed for the flows with multiple- and single-scale disturbances. Variations of the rotation rate Ω allow to investigate the modifications of the vortical structures for single-scale disturbances. At N _Ω=2ΩL/U ₀=10, the comparison between single- and multiple-scale disturbances shows a further increase of R _λ in the latter flow. One-dimensional energy spectra at different distances from the inlet indicate when the effects of the inlet disturbances disappear. Good agreement, in the inertial and in the exponential decay ranges, between the present spectra and those from the DNS of forced isotropic turbulence demonstrates the quality of the numerical method used.     

Coherent structure extraction in turbulent channel flow using boundary adapted wavelets

We introduce boundary adapted wavelets, which are orthogonal and have the same scale in the three spatial directions. The construction thus yields a multiresolution analysis. We analyse direct numerical simulation data of turbulent channel flow computed at a friction Reynolds number of 395, and investigate the role of coherent vorticity. Thresholding of the vorticity wavelet coefficients allows us to split the flow into two parts, coherent and incoherent flows. The coherent vorticity is reconstructed from its few intense wavelet coefficients and the coherent velocity is reconstructed using Biot–Savart's law. The statistics of the coherent flow, i.e. energy and enstrophy spectra, are close to the statistics of the total flow, and moreover, the nonlinear energy budgets of the total flow are very well preserved. The remaining incoherent part, represented by the large majority of the weak wavelet coefficients, corresponds to a structureless, i.e. noise-like, background flow whose energy is equidistributed.