Low-drag events in transitional wall-bounded turbulence

Richard D. Whalley, Jae Sung Park, Anubhav Kushwaha, David J.C. Dennis, Michael D. Graham, Robert J. Poole

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Scopus citations

Abstract

Intermittency of low-drag pointwise wall shear stress measurements within Newtonian turbulent channel flow at transitional Reynolds numbers (friction Reynolds numbers 70 - 130) is characterized using experiments and simulations. Conditional mean velocity profiles during low-drag events closely approach that of a recently discovered nonlinear traveling wave solution; both profiles are near the so-called maximum drag reduction profile, a general feature of turbulent flow of liquids containing polymer additives (despite the fact that all results presented are for Newtonian fluids only). Similarities between temporal intermittency in small domains and spatiotemporal intermittency in large domains is thereby found.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number034602
JournalPhysical Review Fluids
Volume2
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2017

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computational Mechanics
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes

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