Local equilibrium in the inertial layer of wall bounded turbulence

Recently Brouwers [Dissipation equals production in the log layer of wall-induced turbulence. Phys Fluids. 2007;19:101702] carried out an asymptotic analysis using the RANS based turbulence energy transport equation and showed that the energy dissipation equals its production in the inertial layer of wall-induced turbulence. Assuming log-law profile to the mean velocity, pressure, viscous and energy diffusion terms were estimated and shown to be negligibly small compared to the production and dissipation terms thereby proving local equilibrium. However, based on scale relations Tennekes and Lumley [A first course in turbulence. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press; 1994] have already established that the pressure and energy diffusion terms appearing in the energy transport equation are of the same order of magnitude especially in the inertial layer thus leading to a contradiction. Hence we have attempted here to re-estimate the turbulence energy budgets in a different way by invoking the Kolomogrov’s similarity hypotheses and (4/5)th law. Magnitudes of pressure and energy diffusion terms are determined explicitly and found to match well with the DNS data. The striking point of the present analysis is that no prior assumption is enforced on the mean velocity profile. Further, two main advantages of the present study are, (i) reasonable estimates for both the diffusion terms are obtained explicitly that were unavailable before and (ii) these estimates help us to tweak the production/dissipation terms to reflect the influence of turbulent diffusion mechanisms without the necessity to model them as in the case of elliptic relaxation and Reynold stress RANS models.