Time irreversibility is a distinctive feature of non-equilibrium phenomena such as turbulent flows, where irreversibility is mainly associated with an energy cascade process. An Eulerian, multiscale analysis of time irreversibility in wall-bounded turbulence is proposed in this study, which differs from previous works relying on a Lagrangian approach and mainly focusing on homogeneous turbulence. Outcomes reveal a strong connection between irreversibility levels and coherent structures in both turbulent channel and boundary layer flows. In the near-wall region, irreversibility is directly related to the inner spectral peak originating from small-scale turbulent structures in the buffer layer. Conversely, stronger irreversibility is found in correspondence of the outer spectral peak originating from larger turbulent flow scales far from the wall. Our results represent a first effort to characterize Eulerian TI in wall-bounded turbulent flows, thus paving the way for new developments in wall-turbulence modeling and control accounting for broken temporal symmetry.
In this paper we consider a recent theoretical prediction (Bragg \emph{et al.}, Phys. Fluids \textbf{28}, 013305 (2016)) that for inertial particles in 2D turbulence, the nature of the irreversibility of the particle-pair dispersion inverts when the particle inertia exceeds a certain value. In particular, when the particle Stokes number, ${\rm St}$, is below a certain value, the forward-in-time (FIT) dispersion should be faster than the backward-in-time (BIT) dispersion, but for ${\rm St}$ above this value, this should invert so that BIT becomes faster than FIT dispersion. This non-trivial beh…
In this paper we investigate both theoretically and numerically the forward in time (FIT) and backward in time (BIT) dispersion of fluid and inertial particle pairs in isotropic turbulence. Fluid particles are known to separate faster BIT than FIT in three-dimensional turbulence, and we find that inertial particles do the same. However, we find that the irreversibility in the inertial particle dispersion is in general much stronger than that for fluid particles. For example, the ratio of the BIT to FIT mean-square separation can be up to an order of magnitude larger for inertial particles than…
The breaking of detailed balance, the symmetry between forward and backward probability transition between two states, is crucial to understand irreversible systems. In hydrodynamic turbulence, a far-from equilibrium system, we observe a strong manifestation of the breaking of detailed balance by following the evolution of the kinetic energy of individual fluid elements. We found in all the flows that we have investigated that fluid elements decelerate faster than they accelerate, giving rise to negative third moment of energy increments, independently of space dimensionality. The exchange of …
We revisit the issue of Lagrangian irreversibility in the context of recent results [Xu, et al., PNAS, 111, 7558 (2014)] on flight-crash events in turbulent flows and show how extreme events in the Eulerian dissipation statistics are related to the statistics of power-fluctuations for tracer trajectories. Surprisingly, we find that particle trajectories in intense dissipation zones are dominated by energy gains sharper than energy losses, contrary to flight-crashes, through a pressure-gradient driven take-off phenomenon. Our conclusions are rationalised by analysing data from simulations of th…
This paper analyses the turbulent energy cascade from the perspective of statistical mechanics, and relates inter-scale energy fluxes to statistical irreversibility and information-entropy production. The microscopical reversibility of the energy cascade is tested by constructing a reversible 3D turbulent system using a dynamic model for the sub-grid stresses. This system, when reversed in time, develops a sustained inverse cascade towards the large scales, evidencing that the characterisation of the inertial energy cascade must consider the possibility of an inverse regime. This experiment is…
A turbulent flow is maintained by an external supply of kinetic energy, which is eventually dissipated into heat at steep velocity gradients. The scale at which energy is supplied greatly differs from the scale at which energy is dissipated, the more so as the turbulent intensity (the Reynolds number) is larger. The resulting energy flux over the range of scales, intermediate between energy injection and dissipation, acts as a source of time irreversibility. As it is now possible to follow accurately fluid particles in a turbulent flow field, both from laboratory experiments and from numerical…
The irreversible turbulent energy cascade epitomizes strongly non-equilibrium systems. At the level of single fluid particles, time irreversibility is revealed by the asymmetry of the rate of kinetic energy change, the Lagrangian power, whose moments display a power-law dependence on the Reynolds number, as recently shown by Xu et al. [H. Xu et al, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 111, 7558 (2014)]. Here Lagrangian power statistics are rationalized within the multifractal model of turbulence, whose predictions are shown to agree with numerical and empirical data. Multifractal predictions are also…
In three-dimensional turbulent flows energy is supplied at large scales and cascades down to the smallest scales where viscosity dominates. The flux of energy through scales implies the generation of small scales from larger ones, which is the fundamental reason for the irreversibility of the dynamics of turbulent flows. As we showed recently, this irreversibility manifests itself by an asymmetry of the probability distribution of the instantaneous power $p$ of the forces acting on fluid elements. In particular, the third moment of $p$ was found to be negative. Yet, a physical connection betwe…
We use the mean-bacterial-velocity model to investigate the \textit{irreversibility} of two-dimensional (2D) \textit{bacterial turbulence} and to compare it with its 2D fluid-turbulence counterpart. We carry out extensive direct numerical simulations of Lagrangian tracer particles that are advected by the velocity field in this model. Our work uncovers an important, qualitative way in which irreversibility in bacterial turbulence is different from its fluid-turbulence counterpart: For large positive (or large but negative) values of the \textit{friction} (or \textit{activity}) parameter, the p…
Turbulent flows governed by the Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) generate an out-of-equilibrium time irreversible energy cascade from large to small scales. In the NSE, the energy transfer is due to the nonlinear terms that are formally symmetric under time reversal. As for the dissipative term: first it explicitly breaks time reversibility; second it produces a small-scale sink for the energy transfer that remains effective even in the limit of vanishing viscosity. As a result, it is not clear how to disentangle the time irreversibility originating from the non-equilibrium energy cascade from th…
We investigate time-irreversibility from the point of view of a single particle in Burgers turbulence. Inspired by the recent work for incompressible flows [Xu et al., PNAS 111.21 (2014) 7558], we analyze the evolution of the kinetic energy for fluid markers and use the fluctuations of the instantaneous power as a measure of time irreversibility. For short times, starting from a uniform distribution of markers, we find the scaling $\left<[E(t)-E(0)]^n\right>\propto t$ and $\left<p^n\right> \propto \textrm{Re}^{n-1}$ for the power as a function of the Reynolds number. Both observations can be e…
We study the time irreversibility of the direct cascade in two-dimensional turbulence by looking at the time derivative of the square vorticity along Lagrangian trajectories, a quantity which we call metenstrophy. By means of extensive numerical simulations we measure the time irreversibility from the asymmetry of the PDF of the metenstrophy and we find that it increases with the Reynolds number of the cascade, similarly to what found in three-dimensional turbulence. A detailed analysis of the different contributions to the enstrophy budget reveals a remarkable difference with respect to what …
The NS equation is considered (in 2 & 3 dimensions) with a fixed forcing on large scale; the stationary states form a family of probability distributions on the fluid velocity fields depending on a parameter R (Reynolds number). It is proposed that other equations could lead to -- exactly -- the same distributions via a mechanism closely analogous to the coincidence of the canonical and microcanonical averages of local observables in the statistical mechanics thermodynamic limit (proposed, here, to correspond to the limit in which the UV cut-off N, regularizing the equations, is removed to inf…
Recent experimental and computational studies indicate that near wall turbulent flows can be characterized by universal small scale autonomous dynamics that are modulated by large scale structures. We formulate numerical simulations of near wall turbulence in a small domain localized to the boundary, whose size scales in viscous units. To mimic the environment in which the near wall turbulence evolves, our formulation accounts for the flux of mean momentum through the upper boundary of the domain. Comparisons of the model's two dimensional energy spectra and low order single-point statistics w…
Turbulence intensity profiles are compared for smooth- and rough-wall pipe flow measurements made in the Princeton Superpipe. The profile development in the transition from hydraulically smooth to fully rough flow displays a propagating sequence from the pipe wall towards the pipe axis. The scaling of turbulence intensity with Reynolds number shows that the smooth- and rough wall level deviates with increasing Reynolds number. We quantify the correspondence between turbulence intensity and the friction factor.
By using new results from direct simulations of turbulent channels at moderate friction Reynolds numbers (Retau <= 1900) and in very large numerical boxes, we examine the corrections to the similarity assumptions in the overlap and outer regions of wall-bounded turbulence.
Turbulence is omnipresent in Nature and technology, governing the transport of heat, mass, and momentum on multiple scales. For real-world applications of wall-bounded turbulence, the underlying surfaces are virtually always rough; yet characterizing and understanding the effects of wall roughness for turbulence remains a challenge, especially for rotating and thermally driven turbulence. By combining extensive experiments and numerical simulations, here, taking as example the paradigmatic Taylor-Couette system (the closed flow between two independently rotating coaxial cylinders), we show how…
The observability of the flow field away from the wall in turbulent channel flow is studied using only wall observations. Reconstructions are generated from noiseless but limited wall data using linear stochastic estimation, with emphasis on the quality of the reconstruction. All the velocities are well reconstructed in the buffer layer, but only relatively large "wall-attached" eddies are observable farther from the wall. In particular, the large structures accounting for approximately 40% of the total kinetic energy and of the tangential Reynolds stress are captured accurately. It is argued …
This paper presents a new theory of turbulence in time-independent non-Newtonian fluids. The wall layer is modelled in terms of unsteady exchange of viscous momentum between the wall and the main stream, following the classic visualisation of inrush-sweep-ejection/burst. The thickness of the wall layer is found to be the same for Newtonian and purely viscous non-Newtonian fluids, when normalised with the instantaneous wall parameters at the onset of bursting. The results indicate that the mechanisms of turbulence in Newtonian and time-independent fluids are identical when structural similarity…
For wall turbulence, moments of velocity fluctuations are known to be logarithmic functions of the height from the wall. This logarithmic scaling is due to the existence of a characteristic velocity and to the nonexistence of any characteristic height in the range of the scaling. By using mathematics of random variables, we obtain its necessary and sufficient conditions. They are compared with characteristics of a phenomenological model of eddies attached to the wall and also with those of the logarithmic scaling of the mean velocity.
Within wall turbulence, there is a sublayer where the mean wall-normal flux of the streamwise momentum is constant and related to the logarithmic wall-normal profile of the mean streamwise velocity. This relation, i.e., the law of the wall, has been used to estimate the mean stress at the wall surface. However, the momentum flux exhibits large temporal fluctuations. To relate them theoretically to those of the streamwise velocity at the same position from the wall, we consider an orthogonal decomposition of the fluctuations on a plane of the streamwise and wall-normal velocities. Since a large…
Within wall turbulence, there is a sublayer where the mean velocity and the variance of velocity fluctuations vary logarithmically with the height from the wall. This logarithmic scaling is also known for the mean concentration of a passive scalar. By using heat as such a scalar in a laboratory experiment of a turbulent boundary layer, the existence of the logarithmic scaling is shown here for the variance of fluctuations of the scalar concentration. It is reproduced by a model of energy-containing eddies that are attached to the wall.
There exists continuous demand of improved turbulence models for the closure of Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations. Machine Learning (ML) offers effective tools for establishing advanced empirical Reynolds stress closures on the basis of high fidelity simulation data. This paper presents a turbulence model based on the Deep Neural Network(DNN) which takes into account the non-linear relationship between the Reynolds stress anisotropy tensor and the local mean velocity gradient as well as the near-wall effect. The construction and the tuning of the DNN-turbulence model are detai…
This article accompanies a fluid dynamics video entered into the Gallery of Fluid Motion of the 66th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics.
Wall turbulence has a sublayer where one-point statistics, e.g., the mean velocity and the variances of some velocity fluctuations, vary logarithmically with the distance from the wall. This logarithmic scaling is found here for two-point statistics or specifically two-point cumulants of those fluctuations by means of experiments in a wind tunnel. As for corresponding statistics of the rate of the energy dissipation, the scaling is found to be not logarithmic. We reproduce these scaling laws with some mathematics and also with a model of energy-containing eddies that are attached to the wall.
Constructing wall turbulence using hierarchical hairpin vortices
State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, School of Mechanics and Engineering Science, Peking University（北京大学力学与工程科学系湍流与复杂系统国家重点实验室）；Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research（马普太阳系研究所）；HEDPS-CAPT, Peking University（北京大学高能量密度物理教育部/科技部重点实验室）
The effect of damping the longest streaks in wall-bounded turbulence is explored using numerical experiments. It is found that long streaks are not required for the self-sustenance of the bursting process, which is relatively little affected by their absence. In particular, there are turbulence states in which the fluctuations of the streamwise velocity have approximately the same length as the bursts, and are thus presumably associated with the bursts themselves, while the burst structure is essentially indistinguishable from flows in which longer velocity fluctuations are present. This sugge…
We study streamwise turbulence intensity definitions using smooth- and rough-wall pipe flow measurements made in the Princeton Superpipe. Scaling of turbulence intensity with the bulk (and friction) Reynolds number is provided for the definitions. The turbulence intensity scales with the friction factor for both smooth- and rough-wall pipe flow. Turbulence intensity definitions providing the best description of the measurements are identified. A procedure to calculate the turbulence intensity based on the bulk Reynolds number (and the sand-grain roughness for rough-wall pipe flow) is outlined.
Despite the nonlinear nature of wall turbulence, there is evidence that the energy-injection mechanisms sustaining wall turbulence can be ascribed to linear processes. The different scenarios stem from linear stability theory and comprise exponential instabilities from mean-flow inflection points, transient growth from non-normal operators, and parametric instabilities from temporal mean-flow variations, among others. These mechanisms, each potentially capable of leading to the observed turbulence structure, are rooted in simplified theories and conceptual arguments. Whether the flow follows a…
In the present work, an attempt is made to map the sensitivity of the existing zero pressure gradient (ZPG) turbulent boundary layer (TBL) wall-pressure spectrum models with different TBL parameters, and eventually, with different Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) turbulence models, simulated in OpenFOAM and ANSYS Fluent solvers. This study will help future researchers to choose a particular RANS turbulence model vis-à-vis a particular wall-spectrum model in order to obtain a reasonably accurate wind tunnel result predicting capability. First, the best-predicting pressure spectrum models …
New scaling relations for the mean velocity and Reynolds shear stress in viscous sublayer were proposed based on the application of matched asymptotic expansion method to the mean momentum balance. It was shown that the new parameter $Λ_+$ is relevant for the wall turbulence in addition to the friction velocity. From the proposed new scaling of the viscous sublayer the power law for the mean velocity in the overlap region was derived. The complete or incomplete similarity of the parameter $Λ_+$ was shown to be the key factor, which determines whether the mean velocity obeys the power law or lo…
For the constant-stress layer of wall turbulence, two-point correlations of velocity fluctuations are studied theoretically by using the attached-eddy hypothesis, i.e., a phenomenological model of a random superposition of energy-containing eddies that are attached to the wall. While the previous studies had invoked additional assumptions, we focus on the minimum assumptions of the hypothesis to derive its most general forms of the correlation functions. They would allow us to use or assess the hypothesis without any effect of those additional assumptions. We also study the energy spectra and …
This paper extends the resolvent formulation proposed by McKeon & Sharma (2010) to consider turbulence-compliant wall interactions. Under this formulation, the turbulent velocity field is expressed as a linear superposition of propagating modes, identified via a gain-based decomposition of the Navier-Stokes equations. Compliant surfaces, modeled as a complex wall-admittance linking pressure and velocity, affect the gain and structure of these modes. With minimal computation, this framework accurately predicts the emergence of the quasi-2D propagating waves observed in recent direct numerical s…
Direct numerical simulations are performed to contrast turbulent boundary layers over a concave wall without and with free-stream turbulence. Adverse pressure gradient near the onset of curvature leads to sharp decrease in skin friction and intermittent separation. The presence of free-stream turbulence reduces the probability of reverse flow, accelerates the recovery of the boundary layer in the downstream zero-pressure gradient region, and leads to a sustained and appreciable increase in the skin friction. The forcing also promotes the amplification of coherent Görtler structures in the loga…
The influence of near-wall density and viscosity gradients on near-wall turbulence in a channel are studied by means of Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of the low-Mach number approximation of the Navier--Stokes equations. Different constitutive relations for density and viscosity as a function of temperature are used in order to mimic a wide range of fluid behaviours and to develop a generalised framework for studying turbulence modulations in variable property flows. Instead of scaling the velocity solely based on local density, as done for the van Driest transformation, we derive an extens…
In the present study, we use a fifth-order ordinary differential equation, a generalization of the Blasius equation derived from the Leray-alpha model, to examine the transition to turbulence in rough-wall boundary-layer flows. This equation, combined with a weaker formulation of the von Karman log law modified to include the effects of surface roughness, provides a family of turbulent velocity profiles with two free parameters: the momentum thickness based Reynolds number and the roughness function. As a result, a skin-friction correlation is obtained and predictions of the transitional Reyno…
In this paper, we derive mathematical formulas for the skin friction coefficient in wall-bounded turbulence based on the Reynolds averaged streamwise momentum equation and the total stress. Specially, with the theoretical or empirical relation of the total stress, the skin friction coefficient is expressed in terms of the mean velocity and the Reynolds shear stress in an arbitrary wall-normal region $[h_0, h_1]$. The formulas are validated using the direct numerical simulation data of turbulent channel and boundary layer flows, and the results show that our formulas estimate the skin friction …
We study the effect of particle shape on the turbulence in suspensions of spheroidal particles at volume fraction $ϕ= 10\%$ and show how the near-wall particle dynamics deeply changes with the particle aspect ratio and how this affects the global suspension behavior. The turbulence reduces with the aspect ratio of oblate particles, leading to drag reduction with respect to the single phase flow for particles with aspect ratio $\mathcal{AR}\leq1/3$, when the significant reduction in Reynolds shear stress is more than the compensation by the additional stresses, induced by the solid phase. Oblat…
We study the mechanism of energy injection from the mean flow to the fluctuating velocity necessary to maintain wall turbulence. This process is believed to be correctly represented by the linearized Navier--Stokes equations, and three potential linear mechanisms have been considered, namely, modal instability of the streamwise mean cross-flow $U(y,z,t)$, non-modal transient growth, and non-modal transient growth supported by parametric instability. We have designed three numerical experiments of plane turbulent channel flow with additional forcing terms aiming to neutralize one or various lin…
Using the Lagrangian transport of momentum, the Reynolds stress can be expressed in terms of basic turbulence parameters. The Reynolds stress gradient represents the lateral transport of stream-wise momentum, balanced by the u2 transport, pressure and shear force terms in the momentum equation. Data from direct numerical simulations (DNS) have been used to validate this approach, with a good degree of consistency and agreement. This expression for the Reynolds stress gradient adds a transport equation to the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equation, so that the turbulence structure can …
The majority of practical flows, particularly those flows in applications of importance to transport, distribution and climate, are turbulent and as a result experience complex three-dimensional motion with increased drag compared with the smoother, laminar condition. In this study, we describe the development of a simple model that predicts important structural and scaling features of wall turbulence. We show that a simple linear superposition of modes derived from a forcing-response analysis of the Navier-Stokes equations can be used to reconcile certain key statistical and structural descri…
We use the recent frame-indifferent theory of diffusive momentum transport to identify internal barriers in wall-bounded turbulence. Formed by the invariant manifolds of the Laplacian of the velocity field, the barriers block the viscous part of the instantaneous momentum flux in the flow. We employ the level sets of single-trajectory Lagrangian diagnostic tools, the trajectory rotation average and trajectory stretching exponent, to approximate both vortical and internal wall-parallel momentum transport barrier (MTB) interfaces. These interfaces provide frame-indifferent alternatives to classi…
Previous work has established the usefulness of the resolvent operator that maps the terms nonlinear in the turbulent fluctuations to the fluctuations themselves. Further work has described the self-similarity of the resolvent arising from that of the mean velocity profile. The orthogonal modes provided by the resolvent analysis describe the wall-normal coherence of the motions and inherit that self-similarity. In this contribution, we present the implications of this similarity for the nonlinear interaction between modes with different scales and wall-normal locations. By considering the nonl…
Contrasting with free shear flows presenting velocity profiles with inflection points which cascade to turbulence in a relatively mild way, wall bounded flows are deprived of (inertial) instability modes at low Reynolds numbers and become turbulent in a much wilder way, most often marked by the coexistence of laminar and turbulent domains at intermediate Reynolds numbers, well below the range where (viscous) instabilities can show up. There can even be no unstable mode at all, as for plane Couette flow (pCf) or for Poiseuille pipe flow (Ppf) that currently are the subject of intense research. …
We study single-phase and particulate turbulent channel flows, bounded by two incompressible hyper-elastic walls. Different wall elasticities are considered with and without a 10% volume fraction of finite-size rigid spherical particles, while elastic walls are modelled as a neo-Hookean material. We report a significant drag increase and an enhancement of the turbulence activity with growing wall elasticity for both single-phase and particulate cases in comparison with the single-phase flow over rigid walls. A drag reduction and a turbulence attenuation is obtained for the particulate cases wi…
In this paper we investigate, using theory and Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS), the Forward In Time (FIT) and Backward In Time (BIT) Probability Density Functions (PDFs) of the separation of inertial particle-pairs in isotropic turbulence. In agreement with our earlier study (Bragg et al., Phys. Fluids 28, 013305 (2016)), where we compared the FIT and BIT mean-square separations, we find that inertial particles separate much faster BIT than FIT, with the strength of the irreversibility depending upon the final/initial separation of the particle-pair and their Stokes number $St$. However, we…
We conduct direct simulations of turbulent channels imposing different virtual origins for all three velocities using Robin, slip-like boundary conditions to study the effect of displacing the origins perceived by different flow components, a mechanism common to small-textured surfaces. We also explore this effect using opposition control. For riblets, Luchini et al. (1991) proposed that their effect could be reduced to the offset between the streamwise- and spanwise-velocity origins, the latter being the origin perceived by turbulence. Later results on superhydrophobic surfaces suggest that t…
