To main content

Non-equilibrium turbulent boundary layers in high reynolds number flow at incompressible conditions: effects of streamline curvature and three dimensionality

Abstract

The physics and computational prediction of turbulent boundary layer flow over axisymmetric and three-dimensional bodies are examined. Three cases were considered for which extensive experimental results and companion Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) solutions were obtained and/or available in the open literature. These cases all have Reynolds numbers based upon the freestream velocity and body geometric scale on the order of 105 to 106, which is large for laboratory scales but small compared to the maximum scales observed for full-scale vehicles. Despite significant differences in approach flow fields and geometries for these three cases, some common themes emerged in the findings. All cases involved complications due to pressure gradients combined with streamwise curvature, and all exhibited regions of turbulence reduction due to accelerated flow. These complications led to discrepancies in computed results even in attached flow regions where it is often assumed that RANS models provide reliable predictions. The authors recommend further work on modelling approaches that can capture rapid distortion effects on turbulence transport that can be incorporated into industry-useful frameworks. Two cases involving laterally symmetric, three-dimensional wall-mounted hills with aft-body separation revealed that asymmetric mean flow fields are likely to result. This finding has been observed in experiments conducted in multiple facilities and in computations using multiple solvers and turbulence models. It is concluded that non-unique and asymmetric global flow solutions are fundamental to flow cases with lateral geometric symmetry involving turbulent boundary layer separation. Further work is also needed to accurately predict low-frequency unsteadiness due to geometries that produce non-unique mean flow fields. For such flows, it remains to be definitively determined whether experimentally observed modes of the mean flow are equivalent, or nearly equivalent, to asymmetric mean flow solutions obtained using RANS approaches.
Read the publication

Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

  • Todd Lowe
  • Alexander J. Smits
  • Michel Visonneau
  • Ganbo Deng
  • Liuyang Ding
  • Emmanuel Guilmineau
  • Richard Sandberg
  • Ali Haghiri
  • Aldo Gargiulo
  • Julie Duetsch-Patel
  • Philippe Lavoie
  • Daniel MacGregor
  • Luca Savio
  • Yngve Lilleeng Jenssen
  • Christopher Roy
  • Owen Williams
  • Serge Toxopeus
  • William Devenport

Affiliation

  • SINTEF Ocean / Skip og havkonstruksjoner
  • France
  • Netherlands
  • University of Leicester
  • Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  • University of Toronto
  • Princeton University
  • University of Virginia
  • Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)
  • University of Washington
  • University of Melbourne

Year

2024

Published in

Journal of turbulence

Volume

25

Issue

10-11

View this publication at Norwegian Research Information Repository