CHARACTERISTIC DISTRIBUTION AND SCALE INTERACTION OF TURBULENCE IN A BOUNDARY LAYER

etc15 Tracking Number 408

This work revisits the concept of turbulent boundary layers from a novel perspective on scale transfer. Turbulence production and dissipation together with the energy budgets are analyzed in the velocity gradient invariant phase space. In combination with filtering, the mechanism of scale coupling is investigated and illustrated for different characteristic flow topologies. The understanding of the scale coupling is important to model turbulence. Turbulence models describe the complex interaction of the scales of motion in a simplified form. The essential task of turbulence modeling is to capture the coupling of the modeled and unmodeled scales as well as the evolution of the modeled scales within the unmodeled flow. This work characterizes the scale coupling by focusing on the interfaces between modeled and unmodeled flow such as production and dissipation. The mechanisms that govern the evolution of the modeled quantities are investigated for their core properties and universal features. Direct numerical simulation (DNS) is carried out to obtain data of a compressible zero pressure-gradient flat plate turbulent boundary layer flow. This flow topology allows to unveil the effect of a wall on the coupling of scales and evolution of turbulence.