Numerical experiments on modified turbulent channels at moderate Reynolds numbers are used to differentiate between several possible regeneration cycles for the turbulent fluctuations in wall-bounded flows. It is shown that a cycle exists which is local to the near-wall region and does not depend on the outer flow. It involves the formation of velocity streaks from the advection of the mean profile by streamwise vortices, and the generation of the vortices from the instability of the streaks. Interrupting any of those processes leads to laminarization. The presence of the wall seems to be only necessary to maintain the mean shear. The generation of secondary vorticity at the wall is shown to be of little importance in turbulence generation under natural circumstances. Inhibiting its production increases turbulence intensity and drag.

The behaviour of turbulent shear flow over a mass-neutral permeable wall is studied numerically. The transpiration is assumed to be proportional to the local pressure fluctuations. It is first shown that the friction coefficient increases by up to 40% over passively porous walls, even for relatively small porosities. This is associated with the presence of large spanwise rollers, originating from a linear instability which is related both to the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability of shear layers, and to the neutral inviscid shear waves of the mean turbulent profile. It is shown that the rollers can be forced by patterned active transpiration through the wall, also leading to a large increase in friction when the phase velocity of the forcing resonates with the linear eigenfunctions mentioned above. Phase-lock averaging of the forced solutions is used to further clarify the flow mechanism. This study is motivated by the control of separation in boundary layers.

a b s t r a c tWe present an immersed-boundary algorithm for incompressible flows with complex boundaries, suitable for Cartesian or curvilinear grid system. The key stages of any immersed-boundary technique are the interpolation of a velocity field given on a mesh onto a general boundary (a line in 2D, a surface in 3D), and the spreading of a force field from the immersed boundary to the neighboring mesh points, to enforce the desired boundary conditions on the immersed-boundary points. We propose a technique that uses the ] for the interpolation and spreading. Unlike other methods presented in the literature, the one proposed here has the property that the integrals of the force field and of its moment on the grid are conserved, independent of the grid topology (uniform or non-uniform, Cartesian or curvilinear). The technique is easy to implement, and is able to maintain the order of the original underlying spatial discretization. Applications to two-and three-dimensional flows in Cartesian and non-Cartesian grid system, with uniform and non-uniform meshes are presented.

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Direct numerical simulation of turbulent flow in a straight square duct was performed in order to determine the minimal requirements for self-sustaining turbulence. It was found that turbulence can be maintained for values of the bulk Reynolds number above approximately 1100, corresponding to a friction-velocity-based Reynolds number of 80. The minimum value for the streamwise period of the computational domain measures around 190 wall units, roughly independently of the Reynolds number. Furthermore, we present a characterization of the flow state at marginal Reynolds numbers which substantially differs from the fully turbulent one. In particular, the marginal state exhibits a 4-vortex secondary flow structure alternating in time whereas the fully turbulent one presents the usual 8-vortex pattern. It is shown that in the regime of marginal Reynolds numbers buffer layer coherent structures play a crucial role in the appearance of secondary flow of Prandtl's second kind.

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The effect of the variations of the permeability tensor on the close-to-the-wall behaviour of a turbulent channel flow bounded by porous walls is explored using a set of direct numerical simulations. It is found that the total drag can be either reduced or increased by more than 20% by adjusting the permeability directional properties. Drag reduction is achieved for the case of materials with permeability in the vertical direction lower than the one in the wall-parallel planes. This configuration limits the wall normal velocity at the interface while promoting an increase of the tangential slip velocity leading to an almost "one-component" turbulence where the low-and high-speed streaks coherence is strongly enhanced. On the other hand, strong drag increase is found when a high wall-normal and low wall-parallel permeabilities are prescribed. In this condition, the enhancement of the wall-normal fluctuations due to the reduced wall-blocking effect triggers the onset of structures which are strongly correlated in the spanwise direction, a phenomenon observed by other authors in flows over isotropic porous layers or over ribletted walls with large protrusion heights. The use of anisotropic porous walls for drag reduction is particularly attractive since equal gains can be achieved at different Reynolds numbers by rescaling the magnitude of the permeability only. †