Mechanisms of flow tripping by discrete roughness elements in a sweptwing boundary layer

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,Re-qcrit approximate to 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.