A study of the turbulence structures of wall-bounded shear flows

This project extends the study of the structure of wall-bounded flows using the topological properties of eddying motions as developed by Chong et al. (1990), Soria et al. (1992, 1994), and as recently extended by Blackburn et al. (1996) and Chacin et al. (1996). In these works, regions of flow which are focal in nature are identified by being enclosed by an isosurface of a positive small value of the discriminant of the velocity gradient tensor. These regions resemble the attached vortex loops suggested first by Theodorsen (1955). Such loops are incorporated in the attached eddy model versions of Perry & Chong (1982), Perry et al. (1986), and Perry & Marusic (1995), which are extensions of a model first formulated by Townsend (1976). The DNS data of wall bounded flows studied here are from the zero pressure gradient flow of Spalart (1988) and the boundary layer with separation and reattachment of Na & Moin (1996). The flow structures are examined from the viewpoint of the attached eddy hypothesis.