Direct numerical simulation of turbulent flows through concentric annulus with circumferential oscillation of inner wall

Periodic wall oscillations in the spanwise or circumferential direction can greatly reduce the friction drag in turbulent channel and pipe flows. In a concentric annulus, the constant rotation of the inner cylinder can intensify turbulence fluctuations and enhance skin friction due to centrifugal instabilities. In the present study, the effects of the periodic oscillation of the inner wall on turbulent flows through concentric annulus are investigated by the direct numerical simulation (DNS). The radius ratio of the inner to the outer cylinders is 0.1, and the Reynolds number is 2 225 based on the bulk mean velocity U_m and the half annulus gap H. The influence of oscillation period is considered. It is found that for short-period oscillations, the Stokes layer formed by the circumferential wall movement can effectively inhibit the near-wall coherent motions and lead to skin friction reduction, while for long-period oscillations, the centrifugal instability has enough time to develop and generate new vortices, resulting in the enhancement of turbulence intensity and skin friction.     

壁面展向周期振动的槽道湍流减阻机理的研究

利用直接数值模拟研究了带有壁面展向周期振动的槽道湍流.壁面在展向的周期运动使湍流受到抑制,并使壁面摩擦阻力减小.通过对雷诺应力输运方程的分析研究了壁面展向周期振动的减阻机理,进一步揭示了压力变形项在湍流抑制中的关键作用.     

Turbulent Channel Flow with an Artificial Two-Dimensional Wall Layer

Turbulent flow of an incompressible fluid in a plane channel with parallel walls is considered. The three-dimensional time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations are solved numerically using the spectral finite-difference method. An artificial force which completely suppresses lateral oscillations of the velocity is introduced in the near-wall zone (10 % of the channel half-width in the neighborhood of each wall). Thus, the three-dimensional flow zone, in which turbulent oscillations can develop, is separated from the wall by a fluid layer. It is found that the elimination of three-dimensionality in the neighborhood of the walls leads to a significant reduction in the drag. However, complete laminarization does not occur. The flow in the stream core remains turbulent and can be interpreted as a turbulent flow in a channel with walls located on the boundary of the two-dimensional layer and traveling at the local mean-flow velocity. The oscillations developing inside the two-dimensional layer, which have significant amplitude, distort the flow only in the adjacent zone. Beyond this zone the distributions of the mean characteristics and the structure of instantaneous fields completely correspond to ordinary turbulent flow in a channel with rigid walls. The results obtained confirm the hypothesis of the unimportance of the no-slip boundary conditions for the fluctuating velocity component in the mechanism of onset and self-maintenance of turbulence in wall flows.     

Influence of wavy structured surfaces and large scale polymer structures on drag reduction

Drag reduction was studied for turbulent flow over a structured wall that contained 600 sinusoidal waves with a wavelength of 5 mm and an amplitude of 0.25 mm. A concentrated solution of a co-polymer of polyacrylamide and sodium acrylate was injected into the flow through wall slots. Laser Doppler velocimetry was used to measure turbulence. A fluorescence technique was developed that enabled us to demonstrate the existence, under certain circumstances, of large gelatinous structures in the injected polymer solution and in the flow channel.At maximum drag reduction, the Reynolds shear stress was zero and the velocity field was the same as found for a smooth surface. Larger drag reductions could be realized for a wavy wall because the initial drag was larger. The influences of polymers on the turbulent fields are similar for smooth and wavy boundaries. These results are of interest since the interaction with the wall can be quite different for water flow over smooth and wavy boundaries (which are characterized as being completely rough). An important effect of polymers is a decreasing relative importance of high frequency fluctuations with increasing drag reduction that is characterized by a cut-off frequency. This cut-off is the same for smooth and wavy walls at maximum drag reduction. The sensitivity of drag reduction to the method of preparing and delivering the polymer solution suggests that aggregation of polymers could be playing an important role for the system that was studied. For example, drag reduction was enhanced when large polymer structures are present.     

Turbulent Drag Reduction by Uniform Blowing Over a Two-dimensional Roughness

Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulent channel flow over a two-dimensional irregular rough wall with uniform blowing (UB) was performed. The main objective is to investigate the drag reduction effectiveness of UB on a rough-wall turbulent boundary layer toward its practical application. The DNS was performed under a constant flow rate at the bulk Reynolds number values of 5600 and 14000, which correspond to the friction Reynolds numbers of about 180 and 400 in the smooth-wall case, respectively. Based upon the decomposition of drag into the friction and pressure contributions, the present flow is considered to belong to the transitionally-rough regime. Unlike recent experimental results, it turns out that the drag reduction effect of UB on the present two-dimensional rough wall is similar to that for a smooth wall. The friction drag is reduced similarly to the smooth-wall case by the displacement of the mean velocity profile. Besides, the pressure drag, which does not exist in the smooth-wall case, is also reduced; namely, UB makes the rough wall aerodynamically smoother. Examination of turbulence statistics suggests that the effects of roughness and UB are relatively independent to each other in the outer layer, which suggests that Stevenson’s formula can be modified so as to account for the roughness effect by simply adding the roughness function term.     

Pathline analysis of traveling wavy blowing and suction control in turbulent pipe flow for drag reduction

Skin friction drag is much greater in turbulent flows as compared with that in laminar flows. It is well known that traveling wave control can be used to achieve a large drag reduction. In the present study, a direct numerical simulation of a turbulent pipe flow was performed to clarify the mechanism of the drag reduction caused by the traveling wave control. The flow induced by the control was evaluated using pathline analysis. Near the wall, a “closed flow” was formed, wherein the injected particles return to the wall owing to the suction flow. The random component of Reynolds shear stress was perfectly suppressed in the closed flow, which suggests that there was no turbulence. The controlled flow was categorized into four patterns, and each flow characteristic and drag reduction effect was discussed. When the closing rate is high, the drag decreases, while when the closing rate is low, i.e., when the injected particles are released into the main flow, the turbulence is maintained. If the thickness of the layer suppressing turbulence is insufficient, a significant effect in terms of the drag reduction cannot be expected. The large drag reduction owing to the traveling wave control can be attributed to the elimination of turbulence in the region near the wall.     

Predicting Turbulent Spectra in Drag-reduced Flows

In the present work we describe how turbulent skin-friction drag reduction obtained through near-wall turbulence manipulation modifies the spectral content of turbulent fluctuations and Reynolds shear stress with focus on the largest scales. Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of turbulent channels up to Re _τ = 1000 are performed in which drag reduction is achieved either via artificially removing wall-normal turbulent fluctuations in the vicinity of the wall or via streamwise-travelling waves of spanwise wall velocity. This near-wall turbulence manipulation is shown to modify turbulent spectra in a broad range of scales throughout the whole channel. Above the buffer layer, the observed changes can be predicted, exploiting the vertical shift of the logarithmic portion of the mean streamwise velocity profile, which is a classic performance measure for wall roughness or drag-reducing riblets. A simple model is developed for predicting the large-scale contribution to turbulent fluctuation and Reynolds shear stress spectra in drag-reduced turbulent channels in which a flow control acts at the wall. Any drag-reducing control that successfully interacts with large scales should deviate from the predictions of the present model, making it a useful benchmark for assessing the capability of a control to affect large scales directly.     

壁湍流相干结构和减阻控制机理

剪切湍流中相干结构的发现是上世纪湍流研究的重大进展之一,这些大尺度的相干运动在湍流的动力学过程中起重要作用,也为湍流的控制指出了新的方向.壁湍流高摩擦阻力的产生与近壁区流动结构密切相关,基于近壁区湍流动力学过程的减阻控制方案可以有效降低湍流的摩擦阻力,但是随着雷诺数的升高, 这些控制方案的有效性逐渐降低.近年来研究发现, 在高雷诺数情况下外区存在大尺度的相干运动,这种大尺度运动对近壁区湍流和壁面摩擦阻力的产生有重要影响,为高雷诺数湍流减阻控制策略的设计提出了新的挑战.该文将对壁湍流相干结构的研究历史加以简单的回顾,重点介绍近壁区相干结构及其控制机理、近年来高雷诺数外区大尺度运动的研究进展,在此基础上提出高雷诺数减阻控制研究的关键科学问题.      

减阻工况下壁面周期扰动对湍流边界层多尺度的影响

通过在平板壁面施加不同频率振幅的压电陶瓷振子周期性扰动,进行了湍流边界层主动控制减阻的实验研究.在压电陶瓷振子最大减阻工况下(80 V和160Hz),使用单丝边界层探针对压电振子自由端下游2mm处进行测量,得到不同法向位置流向速度信号的时间序列.通过对比施加控制前后的多尺度分析,发现压电振子产生的扰动只对近壁区产生影响,使得近壁区大尺度脉动降低,小尺度脉动强度增大,而对边界层的外区则基本没有影响.进一步对大尺度和小尺度的脉动信号进行条件平均,发现压电振子产生的扰动对小尺度脉动的影响在时间相位上并不均匀,小尺度脉动强度在大尺度脉动为正时比在大尺度脉动为负时具有更明显的增加.这表明壁面周期扰动主要通过使大尺度高速扫掠流体破碎为小尺度结构,来影响相应的高壁面摩擦事件,从而达到减阻效果.      

Characteristics of turbulence transport for momentum and heat in particle-laden turbulent vertical channel flows

The dynamic and thermal performance of particle-laden turbulent flow is investigated via direction numerical simulation combined with the Lagrangian point-particle tracking under the condition of two-way coupling, with a focus on the contributions of particle feedback effect to momentum and heat transfer of turbulence. We take into account the effects of particles on flow drag and Nusselt number and explore the possibility of drag reduction in con-junction with heat transfer enhancement in particle-laden turbulent flows.The effects of particles on momentum and heat transfer are analyzed,and the possibility of drag reduc-tion in conjunction with heat transfer enhancement for the prototypical case of particle-laden turbulent channel flows is addressed.We present results of turbulence modification and heat transfer in turbulent particle-laden channel flow,which shows the heat transfer reduction when large inertial parti-cles with low specific heat capacity are added to the flow. However,we also found an enhancement of the heat transfer and a small reduction of the flow drag when particles with high specific heat capacity are involved.The present results show that particles,which are active agents,interact not only with the velocity field,but also the temperature field and can cause a dissimilarity in momentum and heat transport.This demonstrates that the possibility to increase heat transfer and suppress friction drag can be achieved with addition of par-ticles with different thermal properties.     

Friction Drag Variation via Spanwise Transversal Surface Waves

The introduction of spanwise velocity is a promising technique to effect the near-wall turbulent flow field to influence friction drag. However, the essential physical mechanism which significantly reduces friction drag has not been understood, yet. It is the objective of this numerical study to improve the fundamental knowledge on the drag reduction mechanism. The investigation is based on spanwise traveling transversal surface waves which are applied to modify the near-wall flow field and to influence friction drag. Two actuation configurations are analyzed in detail. Compared with an unactuated flat plate boundary layer simulation the first wave setup, which represents a low frequency wave at an amplitude larger than the viscous sublayer, leads to a reduced wall-shear stress resulting in friction drag reduction of up to 9%. The second wave setup, which possesses a higher frequency and an amplitude in the range of the viscous sublayer, yields an increase of friction drag of about 8%. Unlike previous investigations which focus on excitation setups to lower friction drag, the comparison of the two wave setups in this study allows to identify the effects which on the one hand, lead to drag reduction and on the other hand, result in drag increase. That is, due to the pronounced differences the major effects determining the friction distribution are more evident. The two key features for drag reduction are the damping of the wall-normal vorticity fluctuations above the entire surface and the decrease of turbulence production. Furthermore, the effect of rearranging streamwise vorticity, which has been stated to be responsible for drag reduction, is found to occur at increasing and decreasing drag, i.e., it is not the effect that lowers the friction drag.     

On Large-Scale Friction Control in Turbulent Wall Flow in Low Reynolds Number Channels

The present study reconsiders the control scheme proposed by Schoppa & Hussain (Phys. Fluids 10, 1049–1051 1998), using a new set of numerical simulations. The computations are performed in a turbulent channel at friction Reynolds numbers of 104 (the value employed in the original study) and 180. In particular, the aim is to better characterise the physics of the control as well as to investigate the optimal parameters. The former purpose lead to a re-design of the control strategy: moving from a numerical imposition of the mean flow to the application of a volume force. A comparison between the two is presented. Results show that the original method only gave rise to transient drag reduction. The forcing method, on the other hand, leads to sustained drag reduction, and thus shows the superiority of the forcing approach for all wavelengths investigated. A clear maximum efficiency in drag reduction is reached for the case with a viscous-scaled spanwise wavelength of the vortices of 1200, which yields a drag reduction of 18 %, as compared to the smaller wavelength of 400 suggested as the most efficient vortex in Schoppa & Hussain. Various turbulence statistics are considered, in an effort to elucidate the causes of the drag-reducing effect. For instance, a region of negative production was found, which is quite unusual for developed turbulent channel flow.     

倾斜吹吸控制下湍流边界层减阻的直接数值模拟

雷诺切应力是壁湍流高摩擦阻力的重要来源, 有理论认为可以通过壁面生成负雷诺应力(数值上为正)的方式来削弱湍流流场中雷诺应力的分布, 以此获得流动减阻. 而通过对雷诺平均运动方程的法向二次积分, 可以发现壁面生成正雷诺应力(数值上为负)对壁面摩擦阻力系数才有负贡献. 文中在湍流边界层流动的控制区域下边界设置一系列倾斜狭缝, 利用该装置通过周期性吹吸的方法产生壁面生成正(负)雷诺应力, 并采用直接数值模拟方法考察和验证上文提到的减阻理论. 文中采用的湍流边界层流动模型, 其流动雷诺数(基于外流速度及动量损失厚度)从300 发展到860. 文中通过多组数值模拟算例, 考察了射流强度和频率对壁面摩擦阻力系数的影响, 并对比了壁面生成正或负雷诺应力对流动的影响. 研究表明, 壁面生成正雷诺应力控制的减阻率能达到3.26, 而壁面生成负雷诺应力控制的减阻效果较壁面生成正雷诺应力控制的要差; 壁面生成的正雷诺应力对壁面摩擦阻力有负贡献, 而壁面生成的负雷诺应力对壁面摩擦阻力有正贡献; 通过考察控制的收支比, 发现控制方案不能获得能量净收益.      

The turbulence vorticity as a window to the physics of friction-drag reduction by oscillatory wall motion

DNS data for channel flow, subjected to spanwise (in-plane) wall oscillations at a friction Reynolds number of 1025, are used to examine the turbulence interactions that cause the observed substantial reduction in drag provoked by the forcing. Following a review of pertinent interactions between the forcing-induced unsteady Stokes strain and the Reynolds stresses, identified in previous work by the present authors, attention is focused on the equations governing the components of the enstrophy, with particular emphasis placed on the wall-normal and the spanwise components. The specific objective is to study the mechanisms by which the Stokes strain modifies the enstrophy field, and thus the turbulent stresses. As such, the present analysis sheds fresh light on the drag-reduction processes, illuminating the interactions from a different perspective than that analysed in previous work. The investigation focuses on the periodic rise and fall in the drag and phase-averaged properties during the actuation cycle at sub-optimal actuation conditions, in which case the drag oscillates by around ±2% around the time-averaged 20% drag-reduction margin. The results bring out the important role played by specific strain-related production terms in the enstrophy-component equations, and also identifies vortex tilting/stretching in regions of high skewness as being responsible for the observed strong increase in the spanwise enstrophy components during the drag-reduction phase. Simultaneously, the wall-normal enstrophy component, closely associated with near-wall streak intensity, diminishes, mainly as a result of a reduction in a production term that involves the correlation between wall-normal vorticity fluctuations and the spanwise derivative of wall-normal-velocity fluctuations, which pre-multiplies the streamwise shear strain.     

Analysis of polymer drag reduction mechanisms from energy budgets

The transfer of energy in drag reducing viscoelastic flows is analyzed through a sequence of energetic budgets that include the mean and turbulent kinetic energy, and the mean polymeric energy and mean elastic potential energy. Within the context of single-point statistics, this provides a complete picture of the energy exchange between the mean, turbulent and polymeric fields. The analysis utilizes direct simulation data of a fully developed channel flow at a moderately high friction Reynolds number of 1000 and at medium (30%) and high (58%) drag reduction levels using a FENE-P polymeric model.Results show that the primary effect of the interaction between the turbulent and polymeric fields is to transfer energy from the turbulence to the polymer, and that the magnitude of this transfer does not change between the low and high drag reduction flows. This one-way transfer, with an amplitude independent of the drag reduction regime, comes in contradiction with the purely elastic coupling which is implicit within the elastic theory of the polymer drag reduction phenomenon by Tabor and De Gennes (Europhys. Lett. 2, pp. 519–522, 1986).     

水下湍流减阻途径分析

综述了壁湍流边界层分层结构及近壁区湍流猝发过程,对现有典型水下湍流减阻技术进行了较深入地总结.根据各类减阻方法的特点对水下湍流减阻方法进行了分类,并分析了各类减阻方法对壁湍流流场的影响特征,总结了维持或延长层流、干扰湍流"猝发"、壁面隔离、增大湍流阻尼和改变壁面物性等5种水下湍流减阻可行途径,为开展水下湍流减阻研究及发现新的减阻方法提供参考.     

Modeling of drag reduction in turbulent channel flow with hydrophobic walls by FVM method and weakly-compressible flow equations

In this paper the effects of hydrophobic wall on skin-friction drag in the channel flow are investigated through large eddy simulation on the basis of weaklycompressible flow equations with the MacCormack's scheme on collocated mesh in the FVM framework. The slip length model is adopted to describe the behavior of the slip velocities in the streamwise and spanwise directions at the interface between the hydrophobic wall and turbulent channel flow. Simulation results are presented by analyzing flow behaviors over hydrophobic wall with the Smagorinky subgrid-scale model and a dynamic model on computational meshes of different resolutions. Comparison and analysis are made on the distributions of timeaveraged velocity, velocity fluctuations, Reynolds stress as well as the skin-friction drag. Excellent agreement between the present study and previous results demonstrates the accuracy of the simple classical second-order scheme in representing turbulent vertox near hydrophobic wall. In addition, the relation of drag reduction efficiency versus time-averaged slip velocity is established. It is also foundthat the decrease of velocity gradient in the close wall region is responsible for the drag reduction. Considering its advantages of high calculation precision and efficiency, the present method has good prospect in its application to practical projects.     

Turbulence control in wall-bounded flows by spanwise oscillations

The feasibility of control of wall turbulence by high frequency spanwise oscillations is investigated by direct numerical simulations of a planar turbulent channel flow subjected either to an oscillatory spanwise crossflow or to the spanwise oscillatory motion of one of the channel walls. Periods of oscillation,T _osc. ⁺ =T _osc. u ² /v, ranging from 25 to 500 were studied. For 25<T _osc. ⁺ <200 production of turbulence is suppressed. The most effective suppression of turbulence occurs atT _osc ⁺ =100, for which the overall turbulence production is reduced by 62% compared to the unperturbed channel and sustained turbulent drag reductions of 40% are obtained. The suppression of turbulence is due to a continual shift of the near wall streamwise vortices relative to the wall layer streaks, which in turn leads to a widening, merging and weakening of the wall layer streaks and an overall reduction in the turbulence production. The turbulence suppression mechanism observed in these studies opens up new possibilities for effective control of turbulence in wall-bounded flows.     

Effect of anisotropic resistance characteristic on boundary-layer transitional flow

It is observed that the feather surface exhibits anisotropic resistances for the streamwise and spanwise flows. To obtain a qualitative understanding about the effect of this anisotropic resistance feature of surface on the boundary-layer transitional flow over a flat plate, a simple phenomenological model for the anisotropic resistance is established in this paper. By means of the large eddy simulation (LES) with high-order accurate finite difference method, the numerical investigations are conducted. The numerical results show that with the spanwise resistance hindering the formation of vortexes, the transition from laminar flow to turbulent flow can be delayed, and turbulence is weakened when the flow becomes fully turbulent, which leads to significant drag reduction for the plate. On the contrary, the streamwise resistance renders the flow less stable, which leads to the earlier transition and enhances turbulence in the turbulent region, causing a drag increase for the plate. Thus, it is indicated that a surface with large resistance for spanwise flow and small resistance for streamwise flow can achieve significant drag reduction. The present results highlight the anisotropic resistance characteristic near the feather surface for drag reduction, and shed a light on the study of bird’s efficient flight.     

Parallel spectral-element—Fourier simulation of turbulent flow over riblet-mounted surfaces

The flow in a channel with its lower wall mounted with streamwise V-shaped riblets is simulated using a highly efficient spectral-element—Fourier method. The range of Reynolds numbers investigated is 500 to 4000, which corresponds to laminar, transitional, and turbulent flow states. Our results suggest that in the laminar regime there is no drag reduction, while in the transitional and turbulent regimes drag reduction up to 10% exists for the riblet-mounted wall in comparison with the smooth wall of the channel. For the first time, we present detailed turbulent statistics in a complex geometry. These results are in good agreement with available experimental data and provide a quantitative picture of the drag-reduction mechanism of the riblets.This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grants CTS-8906432, CTS-8906911, and CTS-8914422, AFOSR Grant No. AFOSR-90-0124, and DARPA Grant No. N00014-86-K-0759. The computations were performed on the Cray Y/MP's of NAS at NASA Ames and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and on the Intel 32-node iPSC/860 hypercube at Princeton University.