Development of Turbulent Wakes Evolving from Asymmetric Shear Layers

Abstract

This paper reports an experimental investigation on the response of a turbulent wake past an elongated flat plate to various upstream flow conditions. Different tripping wires were placed on the upper side of the plate downstream the leading edge resulting in asymmetric shear layers evolving from the trailing edges. Mean flow and turbulent fields of the asymmetric wakes were compared to their symmetrical counterpart. The symmetrical wake was found to attain a self-similar state whereas asymmetric wakes continued to slowly evolve towards an expected asymptotic behaviour at a rate that strongly depends on the imposed initial conditions.