Experiments and Modeling of a Compliant Wall Response to a Turbulent Boundary Layer with Dynamic Roughness Forcing

Abstract

The response of a compliant surface in a turbulent boundary layer forced by a dynamic roughness is studied using experiments and resolvent analysis. Water tunnel experiments are carried out at a friction Reynolds number of Reτ≈410, with flow and surface measurements taken with 2D particle image velocimetry (PIV) and stereo digital image correlation (DIC). The narrow band dynamic roughness forcing enables analysis of the flow and surface responses coherent with the forcing frequency, and the corresponding Fourier modes are extracted and compared with resolvent modes. The resolvent modes capture the structures of the experimental Fourier modes and the resolvent with eddy viscosity improves the matching. The comparison of smooth and compliant wall resolvent modes predicts a virtual wall feature in the wall normal velocity of the compliant wall case. The virtual wall is revealed in experimental data using a conditional average informed by the resolvent prediction. Finally, the change to the resolvent modes due to the influence of wall compliance is studied by modeling the compliant wall boundary condition as a deterministic forcing to the smooth wall resolvent framework.