Critical Point for Bifurcation Cascades and Featureless Turbulence.

In this Letter we show that a bifurcation cascade and fully sustained turbulence can share the phase space of a fluid flow system, resulting in the presence of competing stable attractors. We analyze the toroidal pipe flow, which undergoes subcritical transition to turbulence at low pipe curvatures (pipe-to-torus diameter ratio) and supercritical transition at high curvatures, as was previously documented. We unveil an additional step in the bifurcation cascade and provide evidence that, in a narrow range of intermediate curvatures, its dynamics competes with that of sustained turbulence emerging through subcritical transition mechanisms.

Large-Eddy BreakUp Devices - a 40 Years Perspective from a Stockholm Horizon.

In the beginning of the 1980's Large Eddy BreakUp (LEBU) devices, thin plates or airfoils mounted in the outer part of turbulent boundary layers, were shown to be able to change the turbulent structure and intermittency as well as reduce turbulent skin friction. In some wind-tunnel studies it was also claimed that a net drag reduction was obtained, i.e. the reduction in skin-friction drag was larger than the drag on the devices. However, towing-tank experiments with a flat plate at high Reynolds numbers as well as with an axisymmetric body showed no net reduction, but instead an increase in total drag. Recent large-eddy simulations have explored the effect of LEBUs on the turbulent boundary layer and evaluations of the total drag show similar results as in the towing tank experiments. Despite these negative results in terms of net drag reduction, LEBUs manipulate the boundary layer in an interesting way which explains why they still attract some interest. The reason for the positive results in the wind-tunnel studies as compared to drag measurements are discussed here, although no definite answer for the differences can be given.

Plasma Streamwise Vortex Generators for Flow Separation Control on Trucks: A Proof-of-concept Experiment.

An experimental study of the effect of Dielectric Barrier Discharge plasma actuators on the flow separation on the A-pillar of a modern truck under cross-wind conditions has been carried out. The experiments were done in a wind tunnel with a 1:6 scale model of a tractor-trailer combination. The actuators were used as vortex generators positioned on the A-pillar on the leeward side of the tractor and the drag force was measured with a wind-tunnel balance. The results show that the effect at the largest yaw angle (9 degrees) can give a drag reduction of about 20% and that it results in a net power reduction. At lower yaw angles the reduction was smaller. The present results were obtained at a lower Reynolds number and a lower speed than for real driving conditions so it is still not yet confirmed if a similar positive result can be obtained in full scale.

Revisiting History Effects in Adverse-Pressure-Gradient Turbulent Boundary Layers.

The goal of this study is to present a first step towards establishing criteria aimed at assessing whether a particular adverse-pressure-gradient (APG) turbulent boundary layer (TBL) can be considered well-behaved, i.e., whether it is independent of the inflow conditions and is exempt of numerical or experimental artifacts. To this end, we analyzed several high-quality datasets, including in-house numerical databases of APG TBLs developing over flat-plates and the suction side of a wing section, and five studies available in the literature. Due to the impact of the flow history on the particular state of the boundary layer, we developed three criteria of convergence to well-behaved conditions, to be used depending on the particular case under study. (i) In the first criterion, we develop empirical correlations defining the Re𝜃 -evolution of the skin-friction coefficient and the shape factor in APG TBLs with constant values of the Clauser pressure-gradient parameter ß = 1 and 2 (note that ß = δ∗/τw dPe /dx, where δ∗ is the displacement thickness, τw the wall-shear stress and dPe /dx the streamwise pressure gradient). (ii) In the second one, we propose a predictive method to obtain the skin-friction curve corresponding to an APG TBL subjected to any streamwise evolution of ß, based only on data from zero-pressure-gradient TBLs. (iii) The third method relies on the diagnostic-plot concept modified with the shape factor, which scales APG TBLs subjected to a wide range of pressure-gradient conditions. These three criteria allow to ensure the correct flow development of a particular TBL, and thus to separate history and pressure-gradient effects in the analysis.

Adverse-Pressure-Gradient Effects on Turbulent Boundary Layers: Statistics and Flow-Field Organization.

This manuscripts presents a study on adverse-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layers under different Reynolds-number and pressure-gradient conditions. In this work we performed Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements supplemented with Large-Eddy Simulations in order to have a dataset covering a range of displacement-thickness-based Reynolds-number 2300