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Life cycle of streaks in the buffer layer of wall-bounded turbulence

H. Jane Bae*

Myoungkyu Lee†

  • School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA and Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

  • Combustion Research Facility, Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, California 94550, USA

  • *jbae@caltech.edu
  • †mnlee@sandia.gov
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Phys. Rev. Fluids 6, 064603 – Published 4 June, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.6.064603

Abstract

Streaks in the buffer layer of wall-bounded turbulence are tracked in time to study their life cycle. Spatially and temporally resolved direct numerical simulation data are used to analyze the strong wall-parallel movements conditioned to low-speed streamwise flow. The analysis of the streaks shows that there is a clear distinction between wall-attached and detached streaks, and that the wall-attached streaks can be further categorized into streaks that are contained in the buffer layer and the ones that reach the outer region. The results reveal that streaks are born in the buffer layer, coalescing with each other to create larger streaks that are still attached to the wall. Once the streak becomes large enough, it starts to meander due to the large streamwise-to-wall-normal aspect ratio, and consequently the elongation in the streamwise direction, which makes it more difficult for the streak to be oriented strictly in the streamwise direction. While the continuous interaction of the streaks allows the superstructure to span extremely long temporal and length scales, individual streak components are relatively small and short-lived. Tall-attached streaks eventually split into wall-attached and wall-detached components. These wall-detached streaks have a strong wall-normal velocity away from the wall, similar to ejections or bursts observed in the literature. Conditionally averaging the flow fields to these split events show that the detached streak has not only a larger wall-normal velocity compared to the wall-attached counterpart, it also has a larger (less negative) streamwise velocity, similar to the velocity field at the tip of a vortex cluster.

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Phys. Rev. Fluids 6, 064603– Published 4 June, 2021
  • Received 6 February 2021
  • Accepted 6 May 2021
Article part of CHORUS
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