This work studies the effects of skin-friction drag reduction in a turbulent flow over a curved wall, with a view to understanding the relationship between the reduction of friction and changes to the total aerodynamic drag. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) are carried out for an incompressible turbulent flow in a channel where one wall has a small bump; two bump geometries are considered, that produce mildly separated and attached flows. Friction drag reduction is achieved by applying streamwise-travelling waves of spanwise velocity (StTW).
The local friction reduction produced by the StTW is found to vary along the curved wall, leading to a global friction reduction that, for the cases studied, is up to 10\% larger than that obtained in the plane-wall case. Moreover, the modified skin friction induces non-negligible changes of pressure drag, which is favorably affected by StTW and globally reduces by up to 10\%. The net power saving, accounting for the power required to create the StTW, is positive and, for the cases studied, is one half larger than the net saving of the planar case. The study suggests that reducing friction at the surface of a body of complex shape induces further effects, a simplistic evaluation of which might lead to underestimating the total drag reduction.
A bird-feather-inspired herringbone riblet texture was investigated for turbulent drag reduction. The texture consists of blade riblets in a converging/diverging or herringbone pattern with spanwise wavelength $Λ_f$. The aim is to quantify the drag change for this texture as compared to a smooth wall and to study the underlying mechanisms. To that purpose, Direct Numerical Simulations of turbulent flow in a channel with height $L_z$ were performed. The FIK-identity for drag decomposition was extended to textured walls and was used to study the drag change mechanisms. For $Λ_f/L_z \gtrsim O(10)…
Experiments are presented that demonstrate how liquid-infused surfaces can reduce turbulent drag significantly in Taylor-Couette flow. The test liquid was water, and the test surface was composed of square microscopic grooves measuring 100 $μ$m to 800 $μ$m, filled with alkane liquids with viscosities from 0.3 to 1.4 times that of water. We achieve drag reduction exceeding 35\%, four times higher than previously reported for liquid-infused surfaces in turbulent flow. The level of drag reduction increased with viscosity ratio, groove width, fluid area fraction, and Reynolds number. The optimum g…
The drag force acting on a body moving in a fluid has two components, friction drag due to fluid viscosity and form drag due to flow separation behind the body. When present, form drag is usually the most significant between the two and in many applications, streamlining efficiently reduces or prevents flow separation. As studied here, when the operating fluid is water, a promising technique for form drag reduction is to modify the walls of the body with superhydrophobic surfaces. These surfaces entrap gas bubbles in their asperities, avoiding the direct contact of the liquid with the wall. Su…
The modification of dominant coherent structures that extend through the log-region of a drag reduced turbulent boundary layer is studied via examination of two-point correlations from time-resolved particle-image-velocimetry. Measurements were acquired in polymer oceans (uniform concentration) at drag reduction levels corresponding to the low drag reduction regime (< 40%), the high drag reduction (HDR) regime (>40%), and at an intermediate level (46%). The mean velocity profiles and two-point correlations were compared with that of water (Newtonian, DR = 0%). These results show that with incr…
We report on the modification of drag by neutrally buoyant spherical particles in highly turbulent Taylor-Couette flow. These particles can be used to disentangle the effects of size, deformability, and volume fraction on the drag, when contrasted with the drag for bubbly flows. We find that rigid spheres hardly change the drag of the system beyond the trivial viscosity effects caused by replacing the working fluid with particles. The size of the particle has a marginal effect on the drag, with smaller diameter particles showing only slightly lower drag. Increasing the particle volume fraction…
Superhydrophobic surfaces (SHSs) can reduce the friction drag in turbulent flows. In the laminar regime, it has been shown that trace amounts of surfactant can negate this drag reduction, at times rendering these surfaces no better than solid walls (Peaudecerf et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 114(28), 7254-9, 2017). However, surfactant effects on the drag-reducing properties of SHSs have not yet been studied under turbulent flow conditions, where predicting the effects of surfactant in direct numerical simulations remains expensive by today's standards. We present a model for turbulent flow …
A composite drag control (CDC) combining the opposition (OC) and spanwise opposed wall-jet forcing (SOJF) methods is studied in a turbulent channel flow via direct numerical simulation of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. A maximum drag reduction of about 33% is obtained for CDC -- much higher than that produced by either individual method (namely, 19% for SOJF and 23% for OC). Due to the small power input required for both OC and SOJF methods, a significant net power saving (about 32%) is achieved via CDC. Flow analysis shows that CDC can take advantage of both OC and SOJF methods t…
The phenomenon of drag reduction induced by injection of bubbles into a turbulent carrier fluid has been known for a long time; the governing control parameters and underlying physics is however not well understood. In this paper, we use three dimensional numerical simulations to uncover the effect of deformability of bubbles injected in a turbulent Taylor-Couette flow on the overall drag experienced by the system. We consider two different Reynolds numbers for the carrier flow, i.e. $Re_i=5\times 10^3$ and $Re_i=2\times 10^4$; the deformability of the bubbles is controlled through the Weber n…
We explore the ability of anisotropic permeable substrates to reduce turbulent skin-friction, studying the influence that these substrates have on the overlying turbulence. For this, we perform DNSs of channel flows bounded by permeable substrates. The results confirm theoretical predictions, and the resulting drag curves are similar to those of riblets. For small permeabilities, the drag reduction is proportional to the difference between the streamwise and spanwise permeabilities. This linear regime breaks down for a critical value of the wall-normal permeability, beyond which the performanc…
Wall-roughness induces extra drag in wall-bounded turbulent flows. Mapping any given roughness geometry to its fluid dynamic behaviour has been hampered by the lack of accurate and direct measurements of skin-friction drag. Here the Taylor-Couette (TC) system provides an opportunity as it is a closed system and allows to directly and reliably measure the skin-friction. However, the wall-curvature potentially complicates the connection between the wall friction and the wall roughness characteristics. Here we investigate the effects of a hydrodynamically fully rough surface on highly turbulent, …
Long-chained, viscoelastic surfactant solutions (VES) have been widely employed in the oil and gas industry, particularly in hydraulic fracturing and gravel-packing operations, where turbulence is commonly reached due to high pumping rates. With this motivation, we experimentally investigate the turbulent duct flow of an under-studied class of wormlike micellar solutions that forms a gel at room temperature. The fluid is characterized via rotational rheometry, and the turbulent velocity and Reynolds stress profiles are measured via Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA). Three surfactant concentration…
We investigate the mechanisms by which inertial particles dispersed at semi-dilute conditions cause significant drag-reduction in a turbulent channel flow at $\mathrm{Re}_τ= 180$. We consider a series of four-way coupled Euler-Lagrange simulations where particles having friction Stokes number $\mathrm{St}^+ = 6$ or 30 are introduced at progressively increasing mass loading from $M=0.2$ to 1.0. The simulations show that $\mathrm{St}^+ = 30$ particles cause large drag-reduction by up to 19.74\% at $M=1.0$, whereas $\mathrm{St}^+ = 6$ particles cause large drag increase by up to 16.92\% at $M=1.0…
We study the effect of droplet coalescence on turbulent wall-bounded flows, by means of direct numerical simulations. In particular, the volume-of-fluid and front-tracking methods are used to simulate turbulent channel flows containing coalescing and non-coalescing droplets, respectively. We find that coalescing droplets have a negligible effect on the drag, whereas the non-coalescing ones steadily increase drag as the volume fraction of the dispersed phase increases: indeed, at 10\% volume fraction, the non-coalescing droplets show a 30\% increase in drag, whereas the coalescing droplets show…
A numerical investigation of two locally applied drag reducing control schemes is carried out in the configuration of a spatially developing turbulent boundary layer (TBL). One control is designed to damp near-wall turbulence and the other induces constant mass flux in the wall-normal direction. Both control schemes yield similar local drag reduction rates within the control region. However, the flow development downstream of the control significantly differs: persistent drag reduction is found for the uniform blowing case whereas drag increase is found for the turbulence damping case. In orde…
The drag reduction induced by superhydrophobic surfaces is investigated in turbulent pipe flow. Wetted superhydrophobic surfaces are shown to trap gas bubbles in their asperities. This stops the liquid from coming in direct contact with the wall in that location, allowing the flow to slip over the air bubbles. We consider a well defined texture with streamwise grooves at the walls in which the gas is expected to be entrapped. This configuration is modelled with alternating no-slip and shear-free boundary conditions at the wall. With respect to classical turbulent pipe flow, a substantial drag …
Drag penalty during relaminarization and Kelvin-Helmholtz-promoted retransition in an accelerating turbulent boundary layer over initially drag-reducing riblets
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Mississippi（密西西比大学机械工程系）
Using the Taylor--Couette geometry we experimentally investigate the effect of salt on drag reduction caused by bubbles present in the flow. We combine torque measurements with optical high-speed imaging to relate the bubble size to the drag experienced by the flow. Previous findings have shown that a small percentage of air (4%) can lead to dramatic drag reduction (40%). In contrast to previous laboratory experiments, which mainly used fresh water, we will vary the salinity from fresh water to the average salinity of ocean water. We find that the drag reduction is increasingly more inhibited …
We study suspensions of oblate rigid particles in a viscous fluid for different values of the particle volume fractions. Direct numerical simulations have been performed using a direct-forcing immersed boundary method to account for the dispersed phase, combined with a soft-sphere collision model and lubrication corrections for short-range particle-particle and particle-wall interactions. With respect to the single phase flow, we show that in flows laden with oblate spheroids the drag is reduced and the turbulent fluctuations attenuated. In particular, the turbulence activity decreases to lowe…
In the maritime industry, the injection of air bubbles into the turbulent boundary layer under the ship hull is seen as one of the most promising techniques to reduce the overall fuel consumption. However, the exact mechanism behind bubble drag reduction is unknown. Here we show that bubble drag reduction in turbulent flow dramatically depends on the bubble size. By adding minute concentrations (6 ppm) of the surfactant Triton X-100 into otherwise completely unchanged strongly turbulent Taylor-Couette flow containing bubbles, we dramatically reduce the drag reduction from more than 40% to abou…
This paper examines how increasing the value of the Reynolds number $Re$ affects the ability of spanwise-forcing techniques to yield turbulent skin-friction drag reduction. The considered forcing is based on the streamwise-travelling waves of spanwise wall velocity (Quadrio {\em et al. J. Fluid Mech.}, vol. 627, 2009, pp. 161--178). The study builds upon an extensive drag-reduction database created with Direct Numerical Simulation of a turbulent channel flow for two, 5-fold separated values of $Re$, namely $Re_τ=200$ and $Re_τ=1000$. The sheer size of the database, which for the first time sys…
Previous studies on nonspherical particle-fluid interaction were mostly confined to elongated fiber-like particles, which were observed to induce turbulence drag reduction. However, with the presence of tiny disk-like particles how wall turbulence is modulated and whether drag reduction occurs are still unknown. Motivated by those open questions, we performed two-way coupled direct numerical simulations of inertialess spheroids in turbulent channel flow by an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. The additional stress accounts for the feedback from inertialess spheroids on the fluid phase. The results…
Direct numerical simulations of fully-developed turbulent channel flows with wavy walls are undertaken. The wavy walls, skewed with respect to the mean flow direction, are introduced as a means of emulating a Spatial Stokes Layer (SSL) induced by in-plane wall motion. The transverse shear strain above the wavy wall is shown to be similar to that of a SSL, thereby affecting the turbulent flow, and leading to a reduction in the turbulent skin-friction drag. The pressure- and friction-drag levels are carefully quantified for various flow configurations, exhibiting a combined maximum overall-drag …
Polymer additives are commonly utilized to manipulate bubbly flows in various applications. Here, we investigate the effects of clean and contaminated bubbles driven upwards (upflow) in Newtonian and viscoelastic turbulent channel flows. Interface-resolved direct numerical simulations are performed to examine sole and combined effects of soluble surfactant and viscoelasticity using an efficient 3D finite-difference/front-tracking method. The incompressible flow equations are solved fully coupled with the FENE-P viscoelastic model and the equations governing interfacial and bulk surfactant conc…
The effect of the variations of the permeability tensor on the close-to-the-wall behaviour of a turbulent channel flow bounded by porous walls is explored using a set of direct numerical simulations. It is found that the total drag can be either reduced or increased by more than $20\%$ by adjusting the permeability directional properties. Drag reduction is achieved for the case of materials with permeability in the vertical direction lower than the one in the wall-parallel planes. This configuration limits the wall normal velocity at the interface while promoting an increase of the tangential …
We present a physical model for turbulent friction on rough surfaces with regularly distributed roughness elements. Wall shear stresses are expressed as functions of physical quantities. Surfaces with varying roughness densities and roughness elements with different aspect ratios are considered. We propose a straight forward method based on the conservation of momentum to deduce the drag on elements by expressing it as functions of the maximum drag and drag reductions ratios, as the drag on individual elements decreases as packing density increases. A drag reduction effect of momentum redistri…
We experimentally investigate the drag modification by neutrally buoyant finite-size particles with various aspect ratios in a Taylor-Couette (TC) turbulent flow. The current Reynolds number, $Re$, ranges from $6.5\times10^3$ to $2.6\times10^4$, and the particle volume fraction, $Φ$, is up to $10\%$. Particles with three kinds of aspect ratio, $λ$, are used: $λ=1/3$ (oblate), $λ=1$ (spherical) and $λ=3$ (prolate). Unlike the case of bubbly TC flow, we find that the suspended finite-size particles increase the drag of the TC system regardless of their aspect ratios. In addition, the normalized …
The quest for reductions in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in transport has been a powerful driving force for scientific research into methods that might underpin drag-reducing technologies for a variety of vehicular transport on roads, by rail, in the air, and on or in the water. In civil aviation, skin-friction drag accounts for around 50% of the total drag in cruise conditions, thus being a preferential target for research. With laminar conditions excluded, skin friction is intimately linked to the turbulence physics in the fluid layer closest to the skin. Thus, research into drag reduc…
Injection of dilute polymer in a turbulent flow suppresses frictional drag. This challenging and technologically important problem remains primarily unresolved due to the complex nature of the flow. An important factor in the drag reduction is the energy transfer from the velocity field to the polymers. In this paper we quantify this process using energy fluxes, as well as show its universality in diverse flows such as magnetohydrodynamics, quasi-static magnetohydrodynamics, and bubbly turbulence. We show that in such flows, the transfer from kinetic energy to elastic energy leads to a reducti…
We introduce a reinforcement learning (RL) environment to design and benchmark control strategies aimed at reducing drag in turbulent fluid flows enclosed in a channel. The environment provides a framework for computationally-efficient, parallelized, high-fidelity fluid simulations, ready to interface with established RL agent programming interfaces. This allows for both testing existing deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms against a challenging task, and advancing our knowledge of a complex, turbulent physical system that has been a major topic of research for over two centuries, and …
We create a highly controlled lab environment-accessible to both global and local monitoring-to analyse turbulent boiling flows and in particular their shear stress in a statistically stationary state. Namely, by precisely monitoring the drag of strongly turbulent Taylor-Couette flow (the flow in between two co-axially rotating cylinders, Reynolds number $\textrm{Re}\approx 10^6$) during its transition from non-boiling to boiling, we show that the intuitive expectation, namely that a few volume percent of vapor bubbles would correspondingly change the global drag by a few percent, is wrong. Ra…
