Slip-Flow over Lubricated Surfaces

Slip-flow boundary conditions have been used in a direct numerical simulation of incompressible turbulent flow in a plane lubricated channel to mimic the unsteady dynamics of the thin lubricating films present at both channel walls. The results are compared with data from a full simulation, in which also the flow inside the lubrication layers was resolved. By replacing the lubrication layers with the slip-flow conditions, both turbulence statistics and coherent near-wall structures in the bulk-fluid are surprisingly well reproduced. In this approach the need to resolve the flow within the lubricating films is eliminated and the computational efforts are therefore reduced.