# Mechanical Engineering - Research Publications

## Search Results

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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Spatial averaging effects on the streamwise and wall-normal velocity measurements in a wall-bounded turbulence using a cross-wire probe
Baidya, R ; Philip, J ; Hutchins, N ; Monty, JP ; Marusic, I (IOP Publishing, 2019-08-01)
The spatial averaging effects due to a cross-wire probe on the measured turbulence statistics in a wall-bounded flow are investigated using a combined approach of direct numerical simulation data, theoretical methods and experiments. In particular, the wire length (l), spacing ( ) and angle ( ) of a cross-wire probe configured to measure the streamwise and wall-normal velocities are systematically varied to isolate effects of each parameter. The measured streamwise velocity from a cross-wire probe is found to be an average of the filtered velocities sensed by the two wires. Thus, in general, an increase in the sensor dimensions when normalised by viscous units leads to an attenuated variance for the streamwise velocity ( ), resulting from a larger contribution to the spatial averaging process from poorly correlated velocities. In contrast, the variance for the wall-normal velocity ( ) can be amplified, and this is shown to be the result of an additional contributing term (compared to ) due to differences in the filtered wire-normal velocity between the two wires. This additional term leads to a spurious wall-normal velocity signal, resulting in an amplified variance recorded by the cross-wire probe. Compared to the streamwise and wall-normal velocity variances, the Reynolds shear stress ( ) perhaps surprisingly shows less variation when l, and are varied. The robustness of Reynolds shear stress to the finite sensor size is due to two effects: (i) Reynolds shear stress is devoid of energetic contributions from the near-isotropic fine scales unlike the and statistics, hence cross-wire probe dimensions are typically sufficiently small in terms of viscous unit to adequately capture the statistics for a range of l and investigated; (ii) the dependency arises due to cross terms between the filtered velocities from two wires, however, it turns out that these terms cancel one another in the case of Reynolds shear stress, but not for the and statistics. We note that this does not, however, suggest that is easier to measure accurately than the normal stresses; on the contrary, in a companion paper (Baidya et al 2019 Meas. Sci. Technol. 30 085301) we show that measurements are more prone to errors due to uncertainty in probe geometry and calibration procedure.
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Sensitivity of turbulent stresses in boundary layers to cross-wire probe uncertainties in the geometry and calibration procedure
Baidya, R ; Philip, J ; Hutchins, N ; Monty, JP ; Marusic, I (IOP Publishing, 2019-08-01)
The sensitivity of measured turbulent stresses to uncertainties in the probe geometry and calibration procedure is investigated for a cross-wire probe in a turbulent boundary layer using direct numerical simulation data. The errors investigated are guided by experiments, and to replicate the full experimental procedure, the cross-wire calibration procedure is simulated to generate a voltage-to-velocity mapping function, which is then utilised to calculate the measured velocity from simulated cross-wire voltages. We show that wire misalignment can lead to an incorrect mean wall-normal velocity and Reynolds shear stress in the near-wall region due to the presence of shear. Furthermore, we find that misalignment in the wire orientation cannot be fully accounted for through the calibration procedure, presumably due to increased sensitivity to an out-of-plane velocity component. This has strong implications if using a generic commercial cross-wire probe, since inclining these probes to gain access to the near-wall region can lead to a large error (up to 10%) in turbulent stresses and these errors can manifest in the log region and beyond to half the boundary layer thickness. For uncertainties introduced during the calibration procedure, the Reynolds shear stress is observed to exhibit an elevated sensitivity compared with other turbulent stresses. This is consistent with empirical observations where the repeatability in the Reynolds shear stress is found to be the poorest.
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Spatial averaging of velocity measurements in wall-bounded turbulence: single hot-wires
Philip, J ; Hutchins, N ; Monty, JP ; Marusic, I (IOP Publishing Ltd, 2013-11-01)
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Spatial averaging of streamwise and spanwise velocity measurements in wall-bounded turbulence using nu- and x-probes
Philip, J ; Baidya, R ; Hutchins, N ; Monty, JP ; Marusic, I (IOP PUBLISHING LTD, 2013-11-01)
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Distance-from-the-wall scaling of turbulent motions in wall-bounded flows
Baidya, R ; Philip, J ; Hutchins, N ; Monty, JP ; Marusic, I (AIP Publishing, 2017-02-01)
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The quiescent core of turbulent channel flow
Kwon, YS ; Philip, J ; de Silva, CM ; Hutchins, N ; Monty, JP (CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS, 2014-07-01)
Abstract The identification of uniform momentum zones in wall-turbulence, introduced by Adrian, Meinhart & Tomkins (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 422, 2000, pp. 1–54) has been applied to turbulent channel flow, revealing a large ‘core’ region having high and uniform velocity magnitude. Examination of the core reveals that it is a region of relatively weak turbulence levels. For channel flow in the range $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}Re_{\tau } = 1000\text {--}4000$, it was found that the ‘core’ is identifiable by regions bounded by the continuous isocontour lines of the streamwise velocity at $0.95U_{CL}$ (95 % of the centreline velocity). A detailed investigation into the properties of the core has revealed it has a large-scale oscillation which is predominantly anti-symmetric with respect to the channel centreline as it moves through the channel, and there is a distinct jump in turbulence statistics as the core boundary is crossed. It is concluded that the edge of the core demarcates a shear layer of relatively intense vorticity such that the interior of the core contains weakly varying, very low-level turbulence (relative to the flow closer to the wall). Although channel flows are generally referred to as ‘fully turbulent’, these findings suggest there exists a relatively large and ‘quiescent’ core region with a boundary qualitatively similar to the turbulent/non-turbulent interface of boundary layers, jets and wakes.