Characteristics of turbulent boundary layers generated by different tripping devices

In this study, we employ a high-fidelity flow visualisation technique to investigate the resemblance between a turbulent boundary layer generated in a lab environment with a limited development length by different tripping devices and a naturally developed canonical turbulent boundary layer. Furthermore, we aim to provide statistics of the wall-normal velocity fluctuation of the tripped boundary layers and analyse them compared with the canonical turbulent boundary layer. This is achieved by conducting two-dimensional particle image velocimetry measurements to acquire the velocity components in the stream-wise wall-normal plane downstream of the tripping location. Different criteria including integral parameters, diagnostic plot, stream-wise and wall-normal turbulence intensities, and mean velocity deficit profiles are employed to compare the boundary layer profiles generated by different trips with well-behaved turbulent boundary layers presented in the literature. The generation of Reynolds shear stress in tripped boundary layers is analysed using quadrant analysis, and suitably sized trips are shown to have contributions of sweeps and ejections in a similar manner to a well-behaved turbulent boundary layer. Furthermore, through the detection of uniform momentum zones, the presence of coherent structures in the logarithmic and outer layers of these well-behaved tripped boundary layers is shown. The findings of this study identify the blockage created by trips as the main factor affecting the turbulence statistics at a certain downstream distance. The results also suggest that the investigation of inner-scaled mean stream-wise velocity is recommended as a simple yet reliable and rapid assessment of the impact of a trip on the turbulent boundary layer development in short test sections.

Automated summary

In this study, a high-fidelity flow visualisation technique is used to investigate the resemblance between a turbulent boundary layer generated by different tripping devices in a lab environment and a naturally developed canonical turbulent boundary layer. The study finds that the blockage created by trips is the main factor affecting the turbulence statistics at a certain downstream distance.