Direct Numerical Simulations of Flow Past Random Distributed Roughness

Surface roughness can affect boundary layer transition by acting as a receptivity mechanism for transient growth. While experiments have investigated transient growth of steady disturbances generated by discrete roughness elements, very few have studied distributed surface roughness. Some work predicts a 'shielding' effect, where smaller distributed roughness displaces the boundary layer away from the wall and lessens the impact of larger roughness peaks. This work describes an experiment specifically designed to study this effect. Three roughness configurations (a deterministic distributed roughness patch, a slanted rectangular prism, and the combination of the two) were manufactured using rapid prototyping and installed flush with the wall of a flat plate boundary layer. Naphthalene flow visualization and hotwire anemometry were used to characterize the boundary layer in the wakes of the different roughness configurations. Distributed roughness with roughness Reynolds numbers (Re kk ) between 113 and 182 initiated small-amplitude disturbances that underwent transient growth. The discrete roughness element created a pair of high-and low-speed steady streaks in the boundary layer at a sub-critical Reynolds number (Re kk = 151). At a higher Reynolds number (Re kk = 220), the discrete element created a turbulent wedge 15 boundary layer thicknesses downstream. When the distributed roughness was added around the discrete roughness, the discrete element's wake amplitude was decreased. For the higher Reynolds number, this provided a small but measurable transition delay. The distributed roughness redirects energy from longer spanwise wavelength modes to shorter spanwise wavelength modes. The presence of the distributed roughness also decreased the growth rate of secondary instabilities in the roughness wake. This work demonstrates that shielding can delay roughness-induced transition and lays the ground work for future studies of roughness-induced transition.

supporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Roughness Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Roughness receptivity and shielding in a flat plate boundary layer

Kuester

White

2015

“…Another series of DNS intended to reproduce the results by Ergin & White (2006) was performed by Stephani & Goldstein (2009), Drews et al (2011 and Doolittle, Drews & Goldstein (2014). The cylindrical roughness elements were modelled by an immersed boundary method, imposing the no-slip condition on specified grid points.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanisms of flow tripping by discrete roughness elements in a swept-wing boundary layer

Kurz

Kloker

2016

The effects of a spanwise row of finite-size cylindrical roughness elements in a laminar, compressible, three-dimensional boundary layer on a wing profile are investigated by direct numerical simulations (DNS). Large elements are capable of immediately tripping turbulent flow by either a strong, purely convective or an absolute/global instability in the near wake. First we focus on an understanding of the steady near-field past a finite-size roughness element in the swept-wing flow, comparing it to a respective case in unswept flow. Then, the mechanisms leading to immediate turbulence tripping are elaborated by gradually increasing the roughness height and varying the disturbance background level. The quasi-critical roughness Reynolds number above which turbulence sets in rapidly is found to be Re kk,qcrit ≈ 560 and global instability is found only for values well above 600 using nonlinear DNS; therefore the values do not differ significantly from two-dimensional boundary layers if the full velocity vector at the roughness height is taken to build Re kk . A detailed simulation study of elements in the critical range indicates a changeover from a purely convective to a global instability near the critical height. Finally, we perform a three-dimensional global stability analysis of the flow field to gain insight into the early stages of the temporal disturbance growth in the quasi-critical and over-critical cases, starting from a steady state enforced by damping of unsteady disturbances.

“…In the few studies that have been carried out, the majority have used a spanwise array of roughness elements and the relative height of the roughness has been large. Recently, the experiments of Downs, White & Denissen (2008) and Kuester & White (2013) and the DNS simulations of Drews et al (2011) and Drews (2012) were carried out to study roughness-induced transition due to patches of random elements in a Blasius boundary layer. The results showed the occurrence of transient growth in the roughness-induced disturbances, as observed previously for cases of isolated roughness.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Turbulence in a transient channel flow with a wall of pyramid roughness

Seddighi

Pokrajac

et al. 2015

A direct numerical simulation investigation of a transient flow in a channel with a smooth top wall and a roughened bottom wall made of close-packed pyramids is presented. An initially stationary turbulent flow is accelerated rapidly to a new flow rate and the transient flow behaviour after the acceleration is studied. The equivalent roughness heights of the initial and final flows are k + s = 14.5 and 41.5, respectively. Immediately after the acceleration ends, the induced change behaves in a 'plug-flow' manner. Above the roughness crests, the additional velocity due to the perturbation flow is uniform; below the crest, it reduces approximately linearly to zero at the bottom of the roughness elements. The interaction of the perturbation flow with the rough wall is characterised by a series of events that resemble those observed in roughness-induced laminar-turbulent transitions. The process has two broad stages. In the first of these, large-scale vortices, comparable in extent to the roughness wavelength, develop around each roughness element and high-speed streaks form along the ridge lines of the elements. After a short time, each vortex splits into two, namely (i) a standing vortex in front of the element and (ii) a counter-rotating hairpin vortex behind it. The former is largely inactive, but the latter advects downstream with increasing strength, and later lifts away from the wall. These hairpin vortices wrap around strong low-speed streaks. The second stage of the overall process is the breakdown of the hairpin vortices into many smaller multi-scale vortices distributed randomly in space, leading eventually to a state of conventional turbulence. Shortly after the beginning of the first stage, the three components of the r.m.s of the velocity fluctuation all increase significantly in the near-wall region as a result of the vortical structures, and their spectra bear strong signatures of the surface topology. During the second stage, the overall turbulence energy in this region varies only slightly, but the spectrum evolves significantly, eventually approaching that of conventional turbulence. The direct effect of roughness on the flow is confined to a region up to approximately three element heights above the roughness crests. Turbulence in the core region does not begin to increase until after the transition near the wall is largely complete. The processes of transition over the smooth and rough walls of † Email addresses for correspondence: m.seddighi@ljmu.ac.uk, s.he@sheffield.ac.uk Turbulence in a transient channel flow with a rough wall 227 the channel are practically independent of each other. The flow over the smooth wall follows a laminar-turbulent transition and, as known from previous work, resembles a free-stream turbulence-induced boundary layer bypass transition.