Low-drag events in transitional wall-bounded turbulence

Authors

Richard D. Whalley, Newcastle University
Jae Sung Park, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Anubhav Kushwaha, University of Wisconsin-Madison
David J.C. Dennis, University of LiverpoolFollow
Michael D. Graham, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Robert J. Poole, University of Liverpool

Date of this Version

2017

Citation

PHYSICAL REVIEW FLUIDS 2, 034602 (2017)

Comments

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Abstract

Intermittency of low-drag pointwise wall shear stress measurements within Newtonian turbulent channel flow at transitional Reynolds numbers (friction Reynolds numbers 70 – 130) is characterized using experiments and simulations. Conditional mean velocity profiles during low-drag events closely approach that of a recently discovered nonlinear traveling wave solution; both profiles are near the so-called maximum drag reduction profile, a general feature of turbulent flow of liquids containing polymer additives (despite the fact that all results presented are for Newtonian fluids only). Similarities between temporal intermittency in small domains and spatiotemporal intermittency in large domains is thereby found.