Oscar Flores

Effect of wall-boundary disturbances on turbulent channel flows

The interaction between the wall and the core region of turbulent channels is studied using direct numerical simulations at friction Reynolds number Reτ ≈ 630. In these simulations the near-wall energy cycle is effectively removed, replacing the smooth-walled boundary conditions by prescribed velocity disturbances with non-zero Reynolds stress at the walls. The profiles of the first- and second-order moments of the velocity are similar to those over rough surfaces, and the effect of the boundary condition on the mean velocity profile is described using the equivalent sand roughness. Other effects of the disturbances on the flow are essentially limited to a layer near the wall whose height is proportional to a length scale defined in terms of the additional Reynolds stress. The spectra in this roughness sublayer are dominated by the wavenumber of the velocity disturbances and by its harmonics. The wall forcing extracts energy from the flow, while the normal equilibrium between turbulent energy production and dissipation is restored in the overlap region. It is shown that the structure and the dynamics of the turbulence outside the roughness sublayer remain virtually unchanged, regardless of the nature of the wall. The detached eddies of the core region only depend on the mean shear, which is not modified beyond the roughness sublayer by the wall disturbances. On the other hand, the large scales that are correlated across the whole channel scale with ULOG = uτ κ −1 log(Reτ ), both in smooth- and in rough-walled flows. This velocity scale can be interpreted as a measure of the velocity difference across the log layer, and it is used to modify the scaling proposed and validated by del ´

Hierarchy of minimal flow units in the logarithmic layer

The minimal simulation boxes of the buffer layer of turbulent channels can be extended to the logarithmic and outer regions, where they contain a segment of streamwise velocity streak, and a vortex cluster. Smaller boxes restrict “healthy” turbulence closer to the wall, to a layer whose thickness scales with the spanwise size of the box. These minimal boxes burst quasiperiodically, and the bursting period for a band of wall distances grows linearly away from the wall, independently of the box size within the limits within which turbulence is well represented.

Vorticity organization in the outer layer of turbulent channels with disturbed walls

The vortex clusters in the turbulent outer region of rough- and smooth-walled channels, and their associated velocity structures, are compared using data from numerical experiments at friction Reynolds numbers Reτ 674. The results indicate that the roughness of the wall does not affect their properties, particularly the existence of wall-detached and wall-attached populations, and the self-similar size distribution of the latter. The average flow field conditioned to the attached clusters reveals similar conical structures of low streamwise velocity for the rough- and smoothwalled cases, which eventually grow into the global modes previously identified from spectral analysis. We conclude that the vortex clusters of the turbulent outer region either originate away from the wall, or quickly forget their origin, in agreement with Townsend’s similarity hypothesis. Turbulent wall flows are a challenging research subject with applications ranging from drag reduction to atmospheric dispersion. The analysis of how their outer layers may be influenced by the structures of the near-wall region is particularly useful, because the latter are altered by the hydraulically rough surfaces often found in engineering and geophysical flows, and because flow control strategies are usually implemented through actuators located at the wall. It has long been proposed that the inner–outer interactions are due to vortex loops connecting the two layers (see the review by Robinson 1991a). The best-known theoretical models are variations of the vortex hierarchies proposed by Perry & Chong (1982) and Perry, Henbest & Chong 1986, loosely based on Townsend’s (1976, pp. 150– 162) attached-eddy hypothesis. Although those models were initially constructed from

On the aerodynamic forces on heaving and pitching airfoils at low Reynolds number

The influence that the kinematics of pitching and heaving 2D airfoils have on the aerodynamic forces is investigated using Direct Numerical Simulations and a force decomposition algorithm. Large amplitude motions are considered (of the order of one chord), with moderate Reynolds numbers and reduced frequencies of order 1, varying the mean pitch angle and the phase shift between the pitching and heaving motions. Our results show that the surface vorticity contribution (viscous effects) to the aerodynamic force is negligible compared to the contributions from the body motion (fluid inertia) and the vorticity within the flow (circulation). For the range of parameters considered here, the latter tends to be instantaneously oriented in the direction normal to the chord of the airfoil. Based on the results discussed in the paper, a reduced order model for the instantaneous aerodynamic force is proposed, taking advantage of the force decomposition and the chord-normal orientation of the contribution from vorticity within the flow to the total aerodynamic force. The predictions of the proposed model are compared to those of a similar model from the literature, showing a noticeable improvement on the prediction of the mean thrust, and a smaller improvement on the prediction of mean lift and the instantaneous force coefficients.

Kinematics and dynamics of the auto-rotation of a model winged seed

Numerical simulations of the auto-rotation of a model winged seed are presented. The calculations are performed by solving simultaneously the Navier-Stokes equations for the flow surrounding the seed and the rigid-body equations for the motion of the seed. The Reynolds number based on the descent speed and a characteristic chord length is varied in the range 80-240. Within this range, the seed attains an asymptotic state with finite amplitude auto-rotation, while for smaller values of the Reynolds number no auto-rotation is observed. The motion of the seed is characterized by the coning and pitch angles, the angular velocity and the horizontal translation of the seed. The values obtained for these quantities are qualitatively similar to those reported in the literature in experiments with real winged seeds. When increasing the Reynolds number, the seed tends to rotate at higher speeds, with less inclination with respect to the horizontal plane, and with a larger translation velocity. With respect to the aerodynamic forces, it is observed that, with increasing Reynolds number, the horizontal components decrease in magnitude while the vertical component increases. The force distribution along the wing span is characterized using both global and local characteristic speeds and chord lengths for the non-dimensionalisation of the force coefficients. It is found that the vertical component does not depend on the Reynolds number when using local scaling, while the chordwise component of the force does.

A numerical study of a variable-density low-speed turbulent mixing layer

Direct numerical simulations of a temporally-developing, low-speed, variable-density, turbulent, plane mixing layer are performed. The Navier-Stokes equations in the low-Mach number approximation are solved using a novel algorithm based on an extended version of the velocity-vorticity formulation used by Kim et al. (1987) for incompressible flows. Four cases with density ratios

Influence of solid boundary conditions on the evolution of free and wall-bounded turbulent flows

s=1, 2, 4

Numerical simulation of the flow around a flapping-wing micro air vehicle in free flight

and 8 are considered. The simulations are run with a Prandtl number of 0.7 and achieve a

Energy Balance in Stably-Stratified, Wall-Bounded Turbulence

Re_\lambda

Analysis and comparison between rough channel and pipe flows

up to 150 during the self-similar evolution of the mixing layer. It is found that the growth rate of the mixing layer decreases with increasing density ratio, in agreement with theoretical models of this phenomenon. Comparison with high-speed data shows that the reduction of the growth rates with increasing the density ratio has a weak dependence with the Mach number. In addition, the shifting of the mixing layer to the low-density stream has been characterized by analyzing one point statistics within the self-similar interval. This shifting has been quantified, and related to the growth rate of the mixing layer under the assumption that the shape of the mean velocity and density profiles do not change with the density ratio. This leads to a predictive model for the reduction of the growth rate of the momentum thickness, which agrees reasonably well with the available data. Finally, the effect of the density ratio on the turbulent structure has been analyzed using flow visualizations and spectra. It is found that with increasing density ratio the longest scales in the high density side are gradually inhibited. A gradual reduction of the energy in small scales with increasing density ratio is also observed.