Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T02:18:05.072Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Effect of turbulence on the wake of a wall-mounted cube

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2016

R. Jason Hearst
Affiliation:
Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Guillaume Gomit
Affiliation:
Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Bharathram Ganapathisubramani*
Affiliation:
Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
*
Email address for correspondence: g.bharath@southampton.ac.uk

Abstract

The influence of turbulence on the flow around a wall-mounted cube immersed in a turbulent boundary layer is investigated experimentally with particle image velocimetry and hot-wire anemometry. Free-stream turbulence is used to generate turbulent boundary layer profiles where the normalised shear at the cube height is fixed, but the turbulence intensity at the cube height is adjustable. The free-stream turbulence is generated with an active grid and the turbulent boundary layer is formed on an artificial floor in a wind tunnel. The boundary layer development Reynolds number ($Re_{x}$) and the ratio of the cube height ($h$) to the boundary layer thickness ($\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}$) are held constant at $Re_{x}=1.8\times 10^{6}$ and $h/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}=0.47$. It is demonstrated that the stagnation point on the upstream side of the cube and the reattachment length in the wake of the cube are independent of the incoming profile for the conditions investigated here. In contrast, the wake length monotonically decreases for increasing turbulence intensity but fixed normalised shear – both quantities measured at the cube height. The wake shortening is a result of heightened turbulence levels promoting wake recovery from high local velocities and the reduction in strength of a dominant shedding frequency.

Type
Papers
Copyright
© 2016 Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Antoniou, J. & Bergeles, G. 1988 Development of the reattached flow behind surface-mounted two-dimensional prisms. Trans. ASME J. Fluids Engng 110, 127133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, C. J. 1979 The laminar horseshoe vortex. J. Fluid Mech. 95 (2), 347367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, C. J. 1980 The turbulent horseshoe vortex. J. Wind Engng Ind. Aero. 6, 923.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ballio, F., Bettoni, C. & Franzetti, S. 1998 A survey of time-averaged characteristics of laminar and turbulent horseshoe vortices. Trans. ASME J. Fluids Engng 120, 223242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackburn, H. M. & Melbourne, W. H. 1996 The effect of free-stream turbulence on sectional lift forces on a circular cylinder. J. Fluid Mech. 306, 267292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castro, I. P. 1984 Effects of free stream turbulence on low Reynolds number boundary layers. Trans. ASME J. Fluids Engng 106 (3), 298306.Google Scholar
Castro, I. P. & Robins, A. G. 1977 The flow around a surface-mounted cube in uniform and turbulent streams. J. Fluid Mech. 79 (2), 307335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charnay, G., Mathieu, J. & Comte-Bellot, G. 1976 Response of a turbulent boundary layer to random fluctuations in the external stream. Phys. Fluids 19, 12611272.Google Scholar
Dogan, E., Hanson, R. & Ganapathisubramani, B. 2016 Interactions of large-scale free-stream turbulence with turbulent boundary layers. J. Fluid Mech. 802, 79107.Google Scholar
Ganapathisubramani, B., Hutchins, N., Hambleton, W. T., Longmire, E. K. & Marusic, I. 2005 Investigation of large-scale coherence in a turbulent boundary layer using two-point correlations. J. Fluid Mech. 524, 5780.Google Scholar
Hancock, P. E. & Bradshaw, P. 1989 Turbulence structure of a boundary layer beneath a turbulent free stream. J. Fluid Mech. 205, 4576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hearst, R. J., Buxton, O. R. H., Ganapathisubramani, B. & Lavoie, P. 2012 Experimental estimation of fluctuating velocity and scalar gradients in turbulence. Exp. Fluids 53 (4), 925942.Google Scholar
Hearst, R. J. & Lavoie, P. 2014 Decay of turbulence generated by a square-fractal-element grid. J. Fluid Mech. 741, 567584.Google Scholar
Hearst, R. J. & Lavoie, P. 2015 The effect of active grid initial conditions on high Reynolds number turbulence. Exp. Fluids 56 (10), 185.Google Scholar
Hillier, R. & Cherry, N. J. 1981 The effect of stream turbulence on separation bubbles. J. Wind Eng. Ind. Aero. 8, 4958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hussein, H. J. & Martinuzzi, R. J. 1996 Energy balance for turbulent flow around a surface mounted cube placed in a channel. Phys. Fluids 8 (3), 764780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Q. S., Hu, G. & Yan, B. 2014 Investigation of the effects of free-stream turbulence on wind-induced responses of tall building by Large Eddy Simulation. Wind Struct. 18 (6), 599618.Google Scholar
Lim, H. C., Castro, I. P. & Hoxey, R. P. 2007 Bluff bodies in deep turbulent boundary layers: Reynolds-number issues. J. Fluid Mech. 571, 97118.Google Scholar
Lim, H. C., Thomas, T. G. & Castro, I. P. 2009 Flow around a cube in a turbulent boundary layer: LES and experiment. J. Wind Engng Ind. Aerodyn. 97, 96109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makita, H. 1991 Realization of a large-scale turbulence field in a small wind tunnel. Fluid Dyn. Res. 8, 5364.Google Scholar
Marusic, I., Chauhan, K. A., Kulandaivelu, V. & Hutchins, N. 2015 Evolution of zero-pressure-gradient boundary layers from different tripping conditions. J. Fluid Mech. 783, 379411.Google Scholar
Meinders, E. R., Hanjalic, K. & Martinuzzi, R. J. 1999 Experimental study of the local convection heat transfer from a wall-mounted cube in turbulent channel flow. Trans. ASME J. Heat Transfer 121 (3), 564573.Google Scholar
Mydlarski, L. & Warhaft, Z. 1996 On the onset of high-Reynolds-number grid-generated wind tunnel turbulence. J. Fluid Mech. 320, 331368.Google Scholar
Pearson, D. S., Goulart, P. J. & Ganapathisubramani, B. 2013 Turbulent separation upstream of a forward-facing step. J. Fluid Mech. 724, 284304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rind, E. & Castro, I. P. 2012 On the effects of free-stream turbulence on axisymmetric disc wakes. Exp. Fluids 53, 301318.Google Scholar
Saathoff, P. J. & Melbourne, W. H. 1997 Effects of free-stream turbulence on surface pressure fluctuations in a separation bubble. J. Fluid Mech. 337, 124.Google Scholar
Sattari, P., Bourgeois, J. A. & Martinuzzi, R. J. 2012 On the vortex dynamics in the wake of a finite surface-mounted square cylinder. Exp. Fluids 52, 11491167.Google Scholar
Schlatter, P. & Örlü, R. 2012 Turbulent boundary layers at moderate Reynolds numbers: inflow length and tripping effects. J. Fluid Mech. 710, 534.Google Scholar
Sharp, N., Neuscamman, S. & Warhaft, Z. 2009 Effects of large-scale free stream turbulence on a turbulent boundary layer. Phys. Fluids 21, 095105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vinuesa, R., Schlatter, P., Malm, J., Mavriplis, C. & Henningson, D. S. 2015 Direct numerical simulation of the flow around a wall-mounted square cylinder under various inflow conditions. J. Turbul. 16 (6), 555587.Google Scholar
Wang, H. F. & Zhou, Y. 2009 The finite-length square cylinder near wake. J. Fluid Mech. 638, 453490.Google Scholar