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On turbulent spots in plane Poiseuille flow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2006

Dan S. Henningson  and
John Kim
Dan S. Henningson
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, MIT, Cambridge MA 01239, USA
John Kim
Affiliation:
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA
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Abstract

Turbulence characteristics inside a turbulent spot in plane Poiseuille flow are investigated by analysing a database obtained from a direct numerical simulation. The spot is found to consist of two distinct regions — a turbulent area and a wave area. The flow inside the turbulent area has a strong resemblance to that found in the fully developed turbulent channel. Suitably defined mean and r.m.s. fluctuations as well as the internal shear-layer structures are found to be similar to the turbulent counterpart. In the wave area the inflexional mean spanwise profiles cause a rapid growth of oblique waves, which break down to turbulence. The breakdown process of the oblique waves is reminiscent of the secondary instability observed during transition to turbulence in channel and boundary-layer flows. Other detailed characteristics associated with the Poiseuille spot are presented and are compared with experimental results.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 228 , July 1991 , pp. 183 - 205
Copyright
© 1991 Cambridge University Press

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