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Interactions within the turbulent boundary layer at high Reynolds number

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2011

M. GUALA ,
M. METZGER  and
B. J. McKEON
M. GUALA*
Affiliation:
Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
M. METZGER
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
B. J. McKEON
Affiliation:
Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: guala@caltech.edu
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Abstract

Simultaneous streamwise velocity measurements across the vertical direction obtained in the atmospheric surface layer (Reτ ≃ 5 × 105) under near thermally neutral conditions are used to outline and quantify interactions between the scales of turbulence, from the very-large-scale motions to the dissipative scales. Results from conditioned spectra, joint probability density functions and conditional averages show that the signature of very-large-scale oscillations can be found across the whole wall region and that these scales interact with the near-wall turbulence from the energy-containing eddies to the dissipative scales, most strongly in a layer close to the wall, z+ ≲ 103. The scale separation achievable in the atmospheric surface layer appears to be a key difference from the low-Reynolds-number picture, in which structures attached to the wall are known to extend through the full wall-normal extent of the boundary layer. A phenomenological picture of very-large-scale motions coexisting and interacting with structures from the hairpin paradigm is provided here for the high-Reynolds-number case. In particular, it is inferred that the hairpin-packet conceptual model may not be exhaustively representative of the whole wall region, but only of a near-wall layer of z+ = O(103), where scale interactions are mostly confined.

JFM classification

Geophysical and Geological Flows: Atmospheric flows Turbulent Flows: Turbulent boundary layers Turbulent Flows: Turbulent Flows
Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 666 , 10 January 2011 , pp. 573 - 604
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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