Roughness effects on turbulent plane wall jets in an open channel

This paper reports the effects of surface roughness on the mean flow characteristics for a turbulent plane wall jet created in an open channel. The velocity measurements were obtained using a laser Doppler anemometer over smooth and transitionally rough surfaces. The power law proposed by George et al. (2000) was used to determine the friction velocity. Both conventional scaling and the momentum–viscosity scaling proposed by Narasimha et al. (1973) were used to analyze the streamwise evolution of the flow. The results show that surface roughness increases the skin friction coefficient and the inner layer thickness, but the jet half-width is nearly independent of surface roughness.