New experimental research is presented on the characteristics of interfaces and internal shear layers that are present in a turbulent boundary layer (TBL). The turbulent/non-turbulent (T/NT) interface at the outer boundary of the TBL shows the presence of a finite jump in streamwise velocity and is characterised by a thin shear layer. It appears that similar layers of high shear occur also within the TBL which separate regions of almost uniform momentum. It turns out that they exhibit similar characteristics as the external T/NT interface. Furthermore, the spatial growth rate of the TBL, that is derived from theoretical analysis, can be correctly predicted from a momentum balance near the external T/NT interface. Similarly, the entrainment velocities for the average internal layers have been determined. Results indicate that internal layers move slower in the vicinity of the wall, whereas they move faster than the large scale boundary layer growth rate in the outer region of the TBL. It is believed that shear layers bound large scale flow regions of approximately uniform momentum. Hence, the entrainment velocities of these internal layers may be interpreted as growth rates of the large scale motions in a TBL. C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx

In many applications, finite-sized particles are immersed in a turbulent boundary layer (TBL) and it is of interest to study wall effects on the instantaneous shedding of turbulence structures and associated mean velocity and Reynolds stress distributions. Here, 3D flow field dynamics in the wake of a prototypical, small sphere (D + = 50, 692 < Re D < 959) placed in the TBL's outer, logarithmic, and buffer layer, were measured using time-resolved tomo-PIV. Increasing wall proximity increasingly tilted the mean recirculating wake away from the wall implying a negative lift force. Mean velocity deficit recovery scaled with the mean wake length with minor effects of wall proximity. Farthest from the wall, streamwise Reynolds normal stresses encircled the mean wake as an axisymmetric tubular "shell," while transverse and wall-normal stresses extended off its tip as axisymmetric tapered cones. Wall proximity removed axisymmetry and attenuated values near the wall. Reynolds shear stresses were distributed as antisymmetric lobes extending off the mean wake displaying increasing values with reducing sphere-wall gap. Instantaneous snapshots revealed a wake densely populated by "archlike" vortices with shedding frequencies lower than for a sphere in uniform flow except in the buffer layer. Tilting of the wake away from the wall resulted from self-induced motion of shed hairpinlike vortices whose symmetry plane was increasingly wall-normal oriented with reduced sphere-wall gap.

A scalar emanating from a point source in a turbulent boundary layer does not mix homogeneously, but is organized in large regions with little variation of the concentration: uniform concentration zones. We measure scalar concentration using laser-induced fluorescence and, simultaneously, the three-dimensional velocity field using tomographic particle image velocimetry in a water tunnel boundary layer. We identify uniform concentration zones using both a simple histogram technique, and more advanced cluster analysis. From the complete information on the turbulent velocity field, we compute two candidate velocity structures that may form the boundaries between two uniform concentration zones. One of these structures is related to the rate of point separation along Lagrangian trajectories and the other one involves the magnitude of strong shear in snapshots of the velocity field. Therefore, the first method allows for the history of the flow field to be monitored, while the second method only looks at a snapshot. The separation of fluid parcels in time was measured in two ways: the exponential growth of the separation as time progresses (related to finite-time Lyapunov exponents and unstable manifolds in the theory of dynamical systems), and the exponential growth as time moves backward (stable manifolds). Of these two, a correlation with the edges of uniform concentration zones was found for the past Lyapunov field but not with the time-forward future field. The magnitude of the correlation is comparable to that of the regions of strong shear in the instantaneous velocity field.

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