Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T00:38:22.133Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Low-Reynolds-number effects in a fully developed turbulent channel flow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2006

R. A. Antonia ,
M. Teitel ,
J. Kim  and
L. W. B. Browne
R. A. Antonia
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, 2308, Australia
M. Teitel
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, 2308, Australia
J. Kim
Affiliation:
Center for Turbulence Research, NASA-Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA
L. W. B. Browne
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, 2308, Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Low-Reynolds-number effects are observed in the inner region of a fully developed turbulent channel flow, using data obtained either from experiments or by direct numerical simulations. The Reynolds-number influence is observed on the turbulence intensities and to a lesser degree on the average production and dissipation of the turbulent energy. In the near-wall region, the data confirm Wei & Willmarth's (1989) conclusion that the Reynolds stresses do not scale on wall variables. One of the reasons proposed by these authors to account for this behaviour, namely the ‘geometry’ effect or direct interaction between inner regions on opposite walls, was investigated in some detail by introducing temperature at one of the walls, both in experiment and simulation. Although the extent of penetration of thermal excursions into the opposite side of the channel can be significant at low Reynolds numbers, the contribution these excursions make to the Reynolds shear stress and the spanwise vorticity in the opposite wall region is negligible. In the inner region, spectra and co-spectra of the velocity fluctuations u and v change rapidly with the Reynolds number, the variations being mainly confined to low wavenumbers in the u spectrum. These spectra, and the corresponding variances, are discussed in the context of the active/inactive motion concept and the possibility of increased vortex stretching at the wall. A comparison is made between the channel and the boundary layer at low Reynolds numbers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 236 , March 1992 , pp. 579 - 605
Copyright
© 1992 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bradshaw, P. 1967 ‘Inactive’ motion and pressure fluctuations in turbulent boundary layers. J. Fluid Mech. 30, 241–258.Google Scholar
Bradshaw, P., Dean, R. B. & McEligot, D. M. 1973 Calculation of interacting turbulent shear layers: Duct flow. J. Fluids Engng 95, 214–219.Google Scholar
Chen, C.-H. P. & Blackwelder, R. F. 1978 Large-scale motion in turbulent boundary layer: A study using temperature contamination. J. Fluid Mech. 89, 1–31.Google Scholar
Coles, D. 1978 A model for flow in the viscous sublayer. In Lehigh Workshop on Coherent Structure in Turbulent Boundary Layers (ed. C. R. Smith & D. E. Abbott), pp. 462–475. Lehigh University.
Comte-Bellot, G. 1965 PhD thesis, University of Grenoble (trans. P. Bradshaw).
Dean, R. B. 1978 Reynolds number dependence of skin friction and other bulk flow variables in two-dimensional rectangular duct flow. J. Fluids Engng 100, 215–223.Google Scholar
Dean, R. B. & Bradshaw, P. 1976 Measurements of interacting turbulent shear layers in a duct. J. Fluid Mech. 78, 641–676.Google Scholar
El Telbany, M. M. M. & Reynolds, A. J. 1980 Velocity distributions in plane turbulent channel flows. J. Fluid Mech. 100, 1–29.Google Scholar
El Telbany, M. M. M. & Reynolds, A. J. 1981 Turbulence in plane channel flows. J. Fluid Mech. 111, 283–318.Google Scholar
Huffman, G. D. & Bradshaw, P. 1972 A note on von Kármán's constant in low Reynolds number turbulent flows. J. Fluid Mech. 53, 45–60.Google Scholar
Johansson, A. V., Alfredsson, P. H. & Kim, J. 1987 Shear layer structures in near-wall turbulence. Proc. 1987 Summer Program. Center for Turbulence Research, Rep. CTR-587, pp. 237–251.
Kim, J. & Moin, P. 1986 The structure of the vorticity field in turbulent channel flow. J. Fluid Mech. 162, 339–363.Google Scholar
Kim, J., Moin, P. & Moser, R. 1987 Turbulence statistics in fully developed channel flow at low Reynolds number. J. Fluid Mech. 177, 133–166.Google Scholar
Kline, S. J. & Robinson, S. K. 1990 Quasi-coherent structures in the turbulent boundary layer. Part I: Status report on a community-wide summary of the data. In Near-Wall Turbulence (ed. S. J. Kine & N. H. Afgan), pp. 200–217. Hemisphere.
Kreplin, H. P. & Eckelmann, H. 1979 Behavior of the three fluctuating velocity components in the wall region of a turbulent channel flow. Phys. Fluids 22, 1233.Google Scholar
Laufer, J. 1950 Investigation of turbulent flow in a two-dimensional channel. NACA Rep. 1053.Google Scholar
Lu, S. S. & Willmarth, W. W. 1973 Measurements of the structure of the Reynolds stress in a turbulent boundary layer. J. Fluid Mech. 60, 481–511.Google Scholar
Lyons, S. L., Hanratty, T. J. & McLaughlin, J. B. 1989 Turbulence-producing eddies in the viscous wall region. AIChE J. 35, 1962–1974.Google Scholar
Mansour, N. N., Kim, J. & Moin, P. 1989 Near-wall k — turbulence modelling. AIAA J. 27, 1068–1073.Google Scholar
Moin, P. & Spalart, P. R. 1987 Contributions of numerical simulation data bases to the physics, modeling, and measurement of turbulence. NASA TM 100022. NASA-Ames Research Center.Google Scholar
Murlis, J., Tsai, H. M. & Bradshaw, P. 1982 The structure of turbulent boundary layers at low Reynolds numbers. J. Fluid Mech. 122, 13–56.Google Scholar
Patel, V. C. & Head, M. R. 1969 Some observations on skin friction and velocity profiles in fully developed pipe and channel flows. J. Fluid Mech. 38, 181–201.Google Scholar
Perry, A. E., Henbest, S. & Chong, M. S. 1986 A theoretical and experimental study of wall turbulence. J. Fluid Mech. 165, 163–199.Google Scholar
Perry, A. E., Li, J. D., Henbest, S. M. & Marusic, I. 1990 The attached eddy hypothesis in wall turbulence. In Near-Watt Turbulence (ed. S. J. Kline & N. H. Afgan), pp. 715–735. Hemisphere.
Perry, A. E., Lim, K. L. & Henbest, S. M. 1987 An experimental study of the turbulence structure in smooth- and rough-wall boundary layers. J. Fluid Mech. 177, 437–466.Google Scholar
Purtell, L. P., Klebanoff, P. S. & Buckley, F. T. 1981 Turbulent boundary layer at low Reynolds number. Phys. Fluids 24, 802–811.Google Scholar
Reynolds, A. J. & El Telbany, M. M. M. 1982 Velocity and eddy-diffusivity distributions in the buffer region of turbulent wall flow. Phys.-Chem. Hydrodyn. 3, 127–137.Google Scholar
Sabot, J. & Comte-Bellot, G. 1976 Intermittency of coherent structures in the core region of fully developed turbulent pipe flow. J. Fluid Mech. 74, 767–796.Google Scholar
Shah, D. A. 1988 Scaling of the ‘bursting’ and ‘pulse’ periods in wall-bounded turbulent flows. PhD thesis, University of Newcastle, Australia.
Spalart, P. R. 1988 Direct simulation of a turbulent boundary layer up to R0 = 1410. J. Fluid Mech. 187, 61–98.Google Scholar
Sreenivasan, K. R. 1990 The turbulent boundary layer. In Frontiers in Experimental Fluid Mechanics (ed. M. Gad-el-Hak), pp. 200–210. Springer.
Subramanian, C. S., Rajagopalan, S., Antonia, R. A. & Chambers, A. J. 1982 Comparison of conditional sampling and averaging techniques in a turbulent boundary layer. J. Fluid Mech. 123, 335–362.Google Scholar
Suzuki, Y. & Kasagi, N. 1990 Evaluation of hot-wire measurements in turbulent wall shear flows using a direct numerical simulation data base. In Engineering Turbulence Modelling and Experiments (ed. W. Rodi & E. N. Ganic), pp. 361–370. Elsevier.
Teitel, M. & Antonia, R. A. 1990 The interaction region in a turbulent duct flow. Phys. Fluids A 2, 808–813.Google Scholar
Townsend, A. A. 1961 Equilibrium layers and wall turbulence. J. Fluid Mech. 11, 97–120.Google Scholar
Townsend, A. A. 1976 The Structure of Turbulent Shear Flow, pp. 150–156. Cambridge University Press.
Wallace, J. M. 1982 On the structure of bounded turbulent shear flow: A personal view. In Developments in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ed. T. J. Ching), vol. 11, pp. 509–521. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alabama-Huntsville.
Wei, T. & Willmarth, W. W. 1989 Reynolds-number effects on the structure of a turbulent channel flow. J. Fluid Mech. 204, 57–95.Google Scholar