Vortical structures in wall-bounded turbulent flow with recirculation

Abstract

Hairpin or horse-shoe vortices are a widely-accepted feature of the wall-bounded flows. These vortical structures have mostly been studied in canonical flows. Relatively few studies have been conducted on the characteristics of the vortical structures in wall-bounded flows with adverse pressure gradient and still fewer on the detached flows with recirculation. In the present contribution, vortices have been educed using a DNS database of incompressible flow over a 2-dimensional surface bump in a converging-diverging channel at a Reynolds number Reτ of 617, based on the friction velocity at inlet. Vortices have been educed from the instantaneous velocity field in streamwise/wall-normal and spanwise/wall-normal planes using the signed swirling strength criterion. Vortex validation is done through a fit of the vortex velocity field to the Oseen vortex model. The effects of a strong adverse pressure gradient and flow reciruclation on the population density and sizes of the streamwise and spanwise-oriented vortices have been studied. It has been found that a strong adverse pressure gradient and flow recirculation leads to the generation of a new near-wall peak of small spanwise prograde vortex population. Furthermore, this peak of vortex density has been found to coincide and hence relate to the outward movement of the peak of streamwise rms velocity fluctuations typical of adverse pressure gradient wall-bounded turbulent flows.