Since the review of periodic flow phenomena by Berger & Wille (1972) in this journal, over twenty years ago, there has been a surge of activity regarding bluff body wakes. Many of the questions regarding wake vortex dynamics from the earlier review have now been answered in the literature, and perhaps an essential key to our new understandings (and indeed to new questions) has been the recent focus, over the past eight years, on the three-dimensional aspects of nominally two-dimensional wake flows. New techniques in experiment, using laser-induced fluorescence and PIV (Particle-Image-Velocimetry), are vigorously being applied to wakes, but interestingly, several of the new discoveries have come from careful use of classical methods. There is no question that strides forward in understanding of the wake problem are being made possible by ongoing three- dimensional direct numerical simulations, as well as by the surprisingly successful use of analytical modeling in these flows, and by secondary stability analyses. These new developments, and the discoveries of several new phenomena in wakes, are presented in this review.

Vortex Dynamics in the Cylinder Wake

Digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) is a non-intrusive analysis technique that is very popular for mapping flows quantitatively. To get accurate results, in particular in complex flow fields, a number of challenges have to be faced and solved: The quality of the flow measurements is affected by computational details such as image pre-conditioning, sub-pixel peak estimators, data validation procedures, interpolation algorithms and smoothing methods. The accuracy of several algorithms was determined and the best performing methods were implemented in a user-friendly open-source tool for performing DPIV flow analysis in Matlab.

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PIVlab – Towards User-friendly, Affordable and Accurate Digital Particle Image Velocimetry in MATLAB

The structure of energy-containing turbulence in the outer region of a zero-pressure-
 gradient boundary layer has been studied using particle image velocimetry (PIV) to measure the instantaneous velocity fields in a streamwise-wall-normal plane. Experiments performed at three Reynolds numbers in the range 930 0) that occur on a locus inclined at 30–60° to the wall.In the outer layer, hairpin vortices occur in streamwise-aligned packets that propagate with small velocity dispersion. Packets that begin in or slightly above the buffer layer are very similar to the packets created by the autogeneration mechanism (Zhou, Adrian & Balachandar 1996). Individual packets grow upwards in the streamwise direction at a mean angle of approximately 12°, and the hairpins in packets are typically spaced several hundred viscous lengthscales apart in the streamwise direction. Within the interior of the envelope the spatial coherence between the velocity fields induced by the individual vortices leads to strongly retarded streamwise momentum, explaining the zones of uniform momentum observed by Meinhart & Adrian (1995). The packets are an important type of organized structure in the wall layer in which relatively small structural units in the form of three-dimensional vortical structures are arranged coherently, i.e. with correlated spatial relationships, to form much longer structures. The formation of packets explains the occurrence of multiple VITA events in turbulent ‘bursts’, and the creation of Townsend's (1958) large-scale inactive motions. These packets share many features of the hairpin models proposed by Smith (1984) and co-workers for the near-wall layer, and by Bandyopadhyay (1980), but they are shown to occur in a hierarchy of scales across most of the boundary layer.In the logarithmic layer, the coherent vortex packets that originate close to the wall frequently occur within larger, faster moving zones of uniform momentum, which may extend up to the middle of the boundary layer. These larger zones are the induced interior flow of older packets of coherent hairpin vortices that originate upstream and over-run the younger, more recently generated packets. The occurence of small hairpin packets in the environment of larger hairpin packets is a prominent feature of the logarithmic layer. With increasing Reynolds number, the number of hairpins in a packet increases.

Vortex organization in the outer region of the turbulent boundary layer

Small-scale turbulence has been an area of especially active research in the recent past, and several useful research directions have been pursued. Here, we selectively review this work. The emphasis is on scaling phenomenology and kinematics of small-scale structure. After providing a brief introduction to the classical notions of universality due to Kolmogorov and others, we survey the existing work on intermittency, refined similarity hypotheses, anomalous scaling exponents, derivative statistics, intermittency models, and the structure and kinematics of small-scale structure—the latter aspect coming largely from the direct numerical simulation of homogeneous turbulence in a periodic box.

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The phenomenology of small-scale turbulence

Originally introduced in the fluid mechanics community, dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) has emerged as a powerful tool for analyzing the dynamics of nonlinear systems.
 However, existing DMD theory deals primarily with sequential time series for which the measurement dimension is much larger than the number of measurements taken.
 We present a theoretical framework in which we define DMD as the eigendecomposition of an approximating linear operator.
 This generalizes DMD to a larger class of datasets, including nonsequential time series.
 We demonstrate the utility of this approach by presenting novel sampling strategies that increase computational efficiency and mitigate the effects of noise, respectively.
 We also introduce the concept of linear consistency, which helps explain the potential pitfalls of applying DMD to rank-deficient datasets, illustrating with examples.
 Such computations are not considered in the existing literature but can be understood using our more general framework.
 In addition, we show that our theory strengthens the connections between DMD and Koopman operator theory.
 It also establishes connections between DMD and other techniques, including the eigensystem realization algorithm (ERA), a system identification method, and linear inverse modeling (LIM), a method from climate science.
 We show that under certain conditions, DMD is equivalent to LIM.

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On dynamic mode decomposition: Theory and applications

A statistical description of flow regions with negative streamwise velocity is provided based on simulations of turbulent plane channels in the Reynolds number range -dependent dynamics further away from the wall.

The structure and dynamics of backflow in turbulent channels

The receptivity of an under-expanded supersonic impinging jet flow at a sharp nozzle lip to acoustic impulse disturbances is investigated as a function of geometric and flow parameters. The under-expanded supersonic jets emanate from an infinite-lipped nozzle, i.e. the nozzle exit is a circular hole in a flat plate. Two specific cases have been investigated corresponding to nozzle-to-wall distances of h = 2d and 5d, where d is the jet diameter, at a nozzle pressure ratio of 3.4 and a Reynolds number of 50 000. Receptivity in this study is defined as originally coined by Morkovin (Tech. Rep. AFFDL TR, 1969, pp. 68-149; see also Reshotko, AGARD Special Course on Stability and Transition of Laminar Flow, N84-33757 23-34) as the internalisation of an external disturbance into the initial condition that either initiates or sustains a vortical fluid dynamic instability. Notionally, receptivity can be considered as a transfer function between the external disturbance and the initial conditions of the vortical instability. In the case of under-expanded supersonic impinging jet flow subjected to an acoustic disturbance, this transfer function is located at the nozzle lip and, thus, is amenable to an impulse response analysis using the linearised compressible three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. In this study, the transfer function at the nozzle lip is defined as the ratio of the output flow energy to the input acoustic energy of the acoustic disturbance. The sensitivity of this transfer function to the angular acoustic disturbance location, its azimuthal mode number and Strouhal number has been investigated for the two under-expanded supersonic impinging jet flow cases. It is found that for both the h = 2d and 5d cases, acoustic disturbances located at angles greater than 80° from the jet centreline, with Strouhal numbers in the range between 0.7 and 6.5, have the highest receptivity for all azimuthal mode numbers investigated, except the azimuthal mode number 2 in the case of h = 5d. The case with h = 5d is found to also have high receptivity to acoustic disturbances located at angles between 15° and 50° from the jet centreline for acoustic disturbances of all azimuthal mode numbers.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022112020000634

Receptivity characteristics of under-expanded supersonic impinging jets

Local topology of small scale motions in turbulent shear flows

The chemical diversity of the components in bio-oil has a significant effect on its evaporation. The low boiling point compounds, such as simple acids and water, evaporate away from the surface at a faster rate than the internal diffusion. As a result a significant proportion still remains in the droplet core late in the evaporation process. As the droplet temperature increases, these trapped chemicals, in the centre of the droplet, can reach a sufficiently high temperature to cause them to vapourise resulting in rapid expansions, which can fracture the droplet. In this study a numerical model of a stationary, spherically symmetric evaporating bio-oil droplet, in a hot ambient atmosphere, is used to investigate the effect of the rate of diffusion on the evaporation process.

The effect of internal diffusion on an evaporating bio-oil droplet - The chemistry free case

This paper describes a series of experiments using particle image velocimetry to investigate the dynamic stall resulting due to a rapid pitching motion of a flat plate. There exist in such unsteady separated flows multiple time-dependent coherent structures, whose interaction and evolution are complex and nonlinear. The experiments presented here are aimed at determining the behaviour of a dynamic stall vortex system in the Reynolds number range . Evidence is presented for the development of the three-dimensional structure associated with the dynamic stall vortex and its interaction with the no-slip boundary condition at the surface of the pitching plate. The analysis presented suggests that a centrifugal instability exists, and that the form of the three-dimensional structure is consistent with that expected of a centrifugal instability. The structure and scale dependence of the flow are explored using wavelet and Fourier methods, with the dependence of the flow on Reynolds number examined, as well as the influence of spanwise end boundary conditions.

Julio Soria

Papers

The structure and dynamics of backflow in turbulent channels

Receptivity characteristics of under-expanded supersonic impinging jets

Local topology of small scale motions in turbulent shear flows

The effect of internal diffusion on an evaporating bio-oil droplet - The chemistry free case

Stability and three-dimensional evolution of a transitional dynamic stall vortex