No Arabic abstract
This study aims to quantify how turbulence in a channel flow mixes momentum in the mean sense. We applied the macroscopic forcing method to direct numerical simulation (DNS) of a turbulent channel flow at Re$_tau$=180 using two different forcing strategies that are designed to separately assess the anisotropy and nonlocality of momentum mixing. In the first strategy, the leading term of the Kramers-Moyal expansion of the eddy viscosity operator is quantified where the macroscopic forcing is employed to reveal all 81 tensorial coefficients that essentially represent the local-limit eddy viscosity. The results indicate: (1) eddy viscosity has significant anisotropy, (2) Reynolds stresses are generated by both mean strain rate and mean rotation rate tensors, and (3) the local-limit eddy viscosity generates asymmetric Reynolds stress tensors. In the second strategy, the eddy viscosity operator is considered as an integration kernel representing the nonlocal influence of mean gradients on the Reynolds stresses. Considering the average of this kernel in the homogeneous directions, the macroscopic forcing is designed to reveal the nonlocal effects in the wall-normal direction for all 9 components of the Reynolds stresses. Our results indicate that while the shear component of the Reynolds stress is reasonably controlled by the local mean gradients, other components of the Reynolds stress are highly nonlocal. These two analyses provide accurate verification data for quantitative testing of anisotropy and nonlocality effects in turbulence closure models.
We consider the question of fundamental limitations on the performance of eddy-viscosity closure models for turbulent flows, focusing on the Leith model for 2D Large-Eddy Simulation. Optimal eddy viscosities depending on the magnitude of the vorticity gradient are determined subject to minimum assumptions by solving PDE-constrained optimization problems defined such that the corresponding optimal Large-Eddy Simulation best matches the Direct Numerical Simulation. The main finding is that with a fixed cutoff wavenumber $k_c$, the performance of the Large-Eddy Simulation systematically improves as the regularization in the solution of the optimization problem is reduced and this is achieved with the optimal eddy viscosities exhibiting increasingly irregular behavior with rapid oscillations. Since the optimal eddy viscosities do not converge to a well-defined limit as the regularization vanishes, we conclude that the problem of finding an optimal eddy viscosity is not in fact well posed.
Turbulent flows under transcritical conditions are present in regenerative cooling systems of rocker engines and extraction processes in chemical engineering. The turbulent flows and the corresponding heat transfer phenomena in these complex processes are still not well understood experimentally and numerically. The objective of this work is to investigate the turbulent flows under transcritical conditions using DNS of turbulent channel flows. A fully compressible solver is used in conjunction with a Peng-Robinson real-fluid equation of state to describe the transcritical flows. A channel flow with two isothermal walls is simulated with one heated and one cooled boundary layers. The grid resolution adopted in this study is slightly finer than that required for DNS of incompressible channel flows. The simulations are conducted using both fully (FC) and quasi-conservative (QC) schemes to assess their performance for transcritical wall-bounded flows. The instantaneous flows and the statistics are analyzed and compared with the canonical theories. It is found that results from both FC and QC schemes qualitatively agree well with noticeable difference near the top heated wall, where spurious oscillations in velocity can be observed. Using the DNS data, we then examine the usefulness of Townsend attached eddy hypothesis in the context of flows at transcritical conditions. It is shown that the streamwise energy spectrum exhibits the inverse wavenumber scaling and that the streamwise velocity structure function follows a logarithmic scaling, thus providing support to the attached eddy model at transcritical conditions.
For wall-bounded turbulent flows, Townsends attached eddy hypothesis proposes that the logarithmic layer is populated by a set of energetic and geometrically self-similar eddies. These eddies scale with a single length scale, their distance to the wall, while their velocity scale remains constant across their size range. To investigate the existence of such structures in fully developed turbulent pipe flow, stereoscopic particle image velocimetry measurements were performed in two parallel cross-sectional planes, spaced apart by a varying distance from 0 to 9.97$R$, for $Re_tau = 1310$, 2430 and 3810. The instantaneous turbulence structures are sorted by width using an azimuthal Fourier decomposition, allowing us to create a set of average eddy velocity profiles by performing an azimuthal alignment process. The resulting eddy profiles exhibit geometric self-similar behavior in the $(r,theta)$-plane for eddies with spanwise length scales ($lambda_theta/R$) spanning from 1.03 to 0.175. The streamwise similarity is further investigated using two-point correlations between the two planes, where the structures exhibit a self-similar behaviour with length scales ($lambda_theta/R$) ranging from approximately $0.88$ to $0.203$. The candidate structures thereby establish full three-dimensional geometrically self-similarity for structures with a volumetric ratio of $1:80$. Beside the geometric similarity, the velocity magnitude also exhibit self-similarity within these ranges. However, the velocity scale depends on eddy size, and follow the trends based on the scaling arguments proposed by cite{Perry1986}.
We present direct numerical simulations of turbulent channel flow with passive Lagrangian polymers. To understand the polymer behavior we investigate the behavior of infinitesimal line elements and calculate the probability distribution function (PDF) of finite-time Lyapunov exponents and from them the corresponding Cramers function for the channel flow. We study the statistics of polymer elongation for both the Oldroyd-B model (for Weissenberg number $Wi <1$) and the FENE model. We use the location of the minima of the Cramers function to define the Weissenberg number precisely such that we observe coil-stretch transition at $Wiapprox1$. We find agreement with earlier analytical predictions for PDF of polymer extensions made by Balkovsky, Fouxon and Lebedev [Phys. Rev. Lett., 84, 4765 (2000).] for linear polymers (Oldroyd-B model) with $Wi<1$ and by Chertkov [Phys. Rev. Lett., 84, 4761 (2000).] for nonlinear FENE-P model of polymers. For $Wi>1$ (FENE model) the polymer are significantly more stretched near the wall than at the center of the channel where the flow is closer to homogenous isotropic turbulence. Furthermore near the wall the polymers show a strong tendency to orient along the stream-wise direction of the flow but near the centerline the statistics of orientation of the polymers is consistent with analogous results obtained recently in homogeneous and isotropic flows.
The flow of viscoelastic fluids in channels and pipes remain poorly understood, particularly at low Reynolds numbers. Here, we investigate the flow of polymeric solutions in straight channels using pressure measurements and particle tracking. The law of flow resistance is established by measuring the flow friction factor $f_{eta}$ versus flow rate. Two regimes are found: a transitional regime marked by rapid increase in drag, and a turbulent-like regime characterized by a sudden decrease in drag and a weak dependence on flow rate. Lagrangian trajectories show finite transverse modulations not seen in Newtonian fluids. These curvature perturbations far downstream can generate sufficient hoop stresses to sustain the flow instabilities in the parallel shear flow.