An experimental characterization of the turbulent boundary layers developing around a NACA 4412 wing profile is carried out in the Minimum Turbulence Level (MTL) wind tunnel located at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The campaign included collecting wall-pressure data via built-in pressure taps, capturing velocity signals in the turbulent boundary layers (TBLs) using hot-wire anemometry (HWA), and conducting direct skin-friction measurements with oil-film interferometry (OFI). The research spanned two chord-based Reynolds numbers (Re Re = 4 x 105 5 and 106) 6 ) and four angles of attack (5 degrees, degrees , 8 degrees, degrees , 11 degrees degrees and 14 degrees), degrees ), encompassing a broad spectrum of flow conditions, from mild to strong adverse-pressure gradients (APGs), including scenarios where the TBL detaches from the wing surface. This dataset offers crucial insights into TBL behavior under varied flow conditions, particularly in the context of APGs. Key features include the quasi-independence of the pressure coefficient distributions from Reynolds number, which aids in distinguishing Reynolds-number effects from those due to APG strengths. The study also reveals changes in TBL dynamics as separation approaches, with energy shifting from the inner to the outer region and the eventual transition to a free-shear flow state post- separation. Additionally, the diagnostic scaling in the outer region under spatial-resolution effects is considered, showing further evidence for its applicability for small L + , however with inconsistent results for larger L +. The findings and database resulting from this campaign may be of special relevance for the development and validation of turbulence models, especially in the context of aeronautical applications.

This experimental study examines the downstream wake development influenced by attached turbulent boundary layers under adverse and favorable pressure gradients (APG, FPG) on the suction and pressure sides of a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 4412 airfoil. Experiments were performed at a chord-based Reynolds number of Re-c=400 000 and angles of attack of 5 degrees and 8 degrees. Surface pressure scans and hot-wire anemometry were used to characterize boundary layer and wake profiles, extending three chord lengths downstream of the trailing edge. The key contributions are: (i) demonstrating a strong memory effect whereby upstream boundary-layer characteristics persist into the very-near- and near-wake; (ii) establishing a unified inner/outer velocity scaling framework that enables direct comparison of boundary-layer and wake profiles; and (iii) identifying distinct suction- vs pressure-side routes to self-similarity driven by the sign of the pressure gradient. Inner scaling of wake velocity profiles using friction velocity and viscous length scale proves valid only within the very-near-wake. In contrast, outer-scaled velocity-defect profiles using the Zagarola-Smits velocity reveal self-similarity on the suction side from the trailing edge across the entire wake region, whereas pressure-side profiles retain significant upstream influence initially, with self-similarity emerging from the near-wake onward. Turbulence analysis via streamwise velocity variance and premultiplied power spectral densities further shows distinct development patterns on the suction and pressure sides of the wake. The APG on the suction side promotes early development of wake-type structures and self-similarity, while the FPG on the pressure side preserves boundary-layer features deeper into the wake. These findings demonstrate how upstream pressure gradients modulate the transition from boundary-layer-dominated to wake-dominated behavior, providing new physical insight into wake development and supporting improved aerodynamic modeling and wake prediction for aeronautical and wind energy applications.

Thermal anemometry sensors for time-resolved velocity measurements average the measured signal over the length of their sensor, thereby attenuating fluctuations stemming from scales smaller than the wire length. Several compensation methods have emerged for wall turbulence, the most prominent ones relying on the small-scale universality in canonical flows or on the reconstruction based on two attenuated variance profiles obtained with sensors of different length. To extend these methods to non-canonical flows, the present work considers various adverse-pressure gradient (APG) turbulent boundary layer (TBL) flows in order to explore how the small-scale energy is affected in the inner and outer layer and how the two prominent correction methods perform as function of wall-distance, wire length and flow condition. Our findings show that the increased levels of small-scale energy in the inner, but also outer layer associated with APG TBLs reduces the applicability of empirical methods based on the universality of small-scale energy. On the other hand, a correction based on the relationship between the spanwise Taylor microscale and the two-point streamwise velocity correlation function, is able to correct the attenuated profiles of non-canonical cases. Combining the strength of both methods, a composite profile for the spanwise Taylor microscale is suggested, which then is used for the correction of probe-length attenuation effects across a multitude of flow conditions.

Spatially and temporally resolved velocity measurements in wall-bounded turbulent flows remain a challenge. Contrary to classical laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) measurements, the laser Doppler velocity profile sensor (LDV-PS) allows the combined measurement of tracer particle position and velocity, which makes it a promising tool. To assess its feasibility a commercial LDV-PS is employed in a turbulent channel flow at Re_τ =350 . Additionally, the measurement and signal-processing accuracies of velocity and location are evaluated for various tracer-object sizes and velocities. On this basis, the turbulent channel flow measurements are evaluated and compared to reference data from direct numerical simulations. Thus, potentials of the LDV-PS are investigated for different regions of the flow and various data processing routines as well as the experimental practice are discussed from an application perspective.

Wall-bounded turbulent flows as those occurring in transportation (e.g. aviation) or industrial applications (e.g turbomachinery), are usually subjected to pressure gradients (PGs). The presence of such PGs affects greatly the development and physics of the turbulent boundary layer (TBL), making it an open research area. An important phenomena associated with the presence of strong adverse PGs (APGs) as appearing in wings, is the separation of the boundary layer, which can lead to stall.

Measurement of oil and gas two-phase flow with variable flow regimes relies to a large extent on flow patterns and their transitions. Using multiphase flowmeters in flows with high gas volume fractions is therefore usually associated with large uncertainties. This work presents a dynamic neural network method to measure the flow rate using a nonlinear autoregressive network with exogenous inputs (NARX). Total temperature and total pressure are used as network inputs and the obtained results are compared with a multilayer perceptron (MLP). Comparison between modeling results and the experimental data shows that the NARX network can predict oil and gas flow with variable flow regimes with less error compared to the MLP model, e.g. an absolute average percentage deviation (AAPD) of 0.68% instead of 1.02%. The present work can hence be seen as a proof-of-concept study that should motivate further applications of deep learning models to facilitate enhanced accuracy in flow metering.

Direct numerical simulations of the fully developed turbulent flow through helical pipes are performed. The numerical procedure is described, and a validation of the volume force driving the flow is presented. A comparison of the turbulence statistics against literature data is also reported.

Hot-wire measurements of the streamwise velocity are conducted in the large-scale pipe-flow facility CICLoPE in the friction Reynolds number range of 7800 <= Re-tau < 40000. Measurements are performed both with a rake of five synchronised probes arranged at different radial locations, and through a radial scan with a single wire traversing the whole pipe radius. Correlation-based analysis is used to extract features of inter-scale modulation in turbulent pipe flows. The Re-tau-independence of geometric features is shown with the outer scaling. Very-large-scale motions keep the vertical coherence to the wall through the whole pipe radius, while for the large-scale motions, the local coherence gradually become isotropic as the structure centre moves far away from the wall. From results obtained with the one-point amplitude modulation (AM) correlation function map, the AM effect is characterised by positive correlations observed in the inner region, while an opposite AM effect characterised by negative correlations is observed in the outer region. The strongest AM effect (with the maximum correlations) and the zero net-modulation (with zero correlations) show that the phase difference between large and small scales has a linear relation with the logarithm of the outer-scaled wall distance, but the strongest opposite effect (with the negative maximum correlations) behaves with the phase difference independent of the outer scaled wall-normal distance. Two-point AM coefficient maps, which give richer spatial information in the outer region than the one-point map, present the Re-tau-independencefor AM and opposite effects within the present Re-tau range. In addition, the relative variation of the two effects in the coexisting wall-normal range is characterised by identifying the maximum gradient of the one-point AM coefficient and the peak-to-peak value of the two-point AM coefficient map.

The question whether spatial resolution effects should be accounted for when performing hot-wire (or particle image velocimetry) measurements in turbulent wall-bounded flows over rough surfaces in the fully rough regime is addressed and answered by exploiting an existing direct numerical simulation database of open-channel flows at $$Re_\tau =500$$ over a rough surface consisting of randomly distributed roughness elements. The results show sizeable attenuation effects of the streamwise velocity fluctuation intensity, similar to smooth-wall flows with up to 70% for a wire width of around 100 viscous units. A suitable correction scheme is applied to successfully compensate for the spatial resolution effects. Both results indicate that spatial resolution effects are relevant also in fully rough flows and can be corrected a posteriori when the state-of-the-art criteria on sensor size cannot be achieved in experiments.

Spatial and time-resolved characteristics of a single surface dielectric barrier discharge (sDBD) actuator are experimentally and numerically investigated. The paper also focuses on the efficiency of sDBD actuators used as flow-control devices. The motivation is the need for developing a cost-effective way to optimize the balance between control performance and actuator power consumption. The study considers the steady state as often employed in experiments as well as the transient regime. Experimental methods to obtain the active power are revisited, and for the first time, the commonly used simplified phenomenological Suzen–Huang model (SHM) is used for the computation of electrical characteristics. The SHM represents fair qualitative features of the starting vortex. However, it fails when time-resolved velocity profiles are compared. Results show that even with an optimized parametrical analysis of the “tuned” plasma variables, the model is not able to fully reproduce the induced wall-jet neither spatially nor temporally. Furthermore, it underestimates the power consumption by more than 80%. The intrinsic challenge of accurately measuring the alternating current of the DBD and the instantaneous mechanical power, together with the failure of representing time-resolved velocity profiles and the underestimated electric power by the model, highlights that a better phenomenological model including gas dynamics and electric characteristics or using a fully coupled physical plasma model is required.

Wake analysis plays a significant role in wind-farm planning through the evaluation of losses and energy yield. Wind-tunnel tests for wake studies have high costs and are time-consuming. Therefore, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) emerges as an efficient alternative. An especially attractive approach is based on the solution of the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations with two-equation turbulence closure models. The validity of this approach and its inherent limitations, however, remain to be fully understood. To this end, detailed wind-tunnel experiments in the wake of a NACA4412 wing section profile are compared with CFD results. Two- and three-dimensional RANS simulations are carried out for a range of angles of attack up to stall conditions at a chord- and inflow-based Reynolds number of Rec=4×105. Here, we aim to investigate the wake characteristics and self-similar behaviour, both from the experimental and numerical perspectives. The measurements are carried out by means of hot-wire anemometry capturing the wake pattern in several planes. The sensitivity of the CFD model to different configurations of the setup and the considerations required for reliable simulation are discussed. The agreement between CFD, experiments, and the literature is fairly good in many aspects, including the self-similar behaviour and wake parameters, as well as the flow field. Comparison of experiments with URANS/RANS data indicates that the latter is an adequate methodology to characterize wings and their wakes once the CFD setup is designed appropriately and the limitations due to discretization and turbulence modelling are considered.

Flush-mounted cavity hot-wire probes have emerged as an alternative to classical hot-wire probes mounted several diameters above the surface for wall-shear stress measurements. They aim at increasing the frequency response and accuracy by circumventing the well-known issue of heat transfer to the substrate that hot-wire and hot-film probes possess. Their use, however, depends on the assumption that the cavity does not influence the flow field. In this study, we show that this assumption does not hold, and that turbulence statistics are modified by the presence of the cavity with sizes that are practically in use. The mean velocity and fluctuations increase near the cavity while the shear stress decreases in its surroundings, all seemingly stemming from the fact that the no-slip condition is not present anymore and that flow reversal occurs. Overall, the energy spectra and the probability density function of the wall shear stress fluctuations indicate a change of nature of turbulence by the presence of the cavity.

This study investigates cold thermal energy storage (CTES) using a helical coil heat exchanger modified with bubble injection. One of the effective methods for increasing the heat transfer rate in heat exchangers is using bubble injection. A helical coil heat exchanger is immersed inside a cylindrical water storage tank, where the helical coil is the evaporator of a vapor compression refrigeration cycle (VCRC) and provides the designed cooling. Experimental studies were carried out to examine the impact of bubble injection on Nusselt number, the temperature differences in the storage tank, exergy degradation in the evaporator, and cycle coefficient of performance (COP). The bubbles were injected from the bottom of the storage tank in four different geometries at airflow rates ranging from 3 to 11 L/min. The experimental results of this study revealed that bubble injection could significantly increase the COP and heat transfer rate from the storage tank, as well as the exergy destruction and Nusselt number (Nu). This increase was highly dependent on the geometry and flow rate of the bubble injection. The results also indicated that the bubble injection has an optimal flow rate value, which was 9 L/min in this study. More specifically, the COP of the refrigeration cycle and the Nu number increased by 124% and 452%, respectively, compared to the non-bubble injection mode. Finally, for calculating the outside Nusselt number of the helical coil, an empirical correlation as a function of bubble flow rate and bubble injection angle was proposed.

A computational study based on well-resolved large-eddy simulations is performed to study the skin friction modification by a large-eddy breakup device (LEBU) in a zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer. The LEBU was modeled using an immersed boundary method. It is observed that the presence of the device leads to the generation of wake vortices, which propagate downstream from the LEBU and toward the wall. A skin friction decomposition procedure is utilized to study different physical mechanisms of the observed skin friction reduction. From the skin friction decomposition, it is found that the skin friction reduction can be characterized by three universal regions of different changes for the skin friction contributions. The first region is predominantly associated with the formation of the wake vortices and the reduction of Reynolds shear stress. In the second region, the mean streamwise velocity fields show that a region of velocity deficit formed downstream of the LEBU propagates toward the wall and leads to turbulence reduction due to wake wall interactions, which also induces a local maximum skin friction reduction. In the third region, the dissipation of wake vortices leads to the regeneration of Reynolds shear stress. A quadrant analysis of the Reynolds shear stress contribution reveals that the LEBU increases the Q2 and Q4 contributions and attenuates the Q1 and Q3 contributions in the first region, followed by an onset of Reynolds shear stress further downstream.

Parallel sidewalls are the standard bounding walls in wind tunnels when making a wind tunnel model for free-flight condition. The consequence of confinement in wind tunnel tests, known as wall-interference, is one of the main sources of uncertainty in experimental aerodynamics, limiting the realizability of free-flight conditions. Although this has been an issue when designing transonic wind tunnels and/or in cases with large blockage ratios, even subsonic wind tunnels at low-blockage-ratios might require wall corrections if a good representation of free-flight conditions is intended. In order to avoid the cumbersome streamlining methods especially for subsonic wind tunnels, a sensitivity analysis is conducted in order to investigate the effect of inclined sidewalls as a reduced-order wall insert in the airfoil plane. This problem is investigated via Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulations, and a NACA4412 wing at the angles of attack between 0 and 11 degrees at a moderate Reynolds number (400 k) is considered. The simulations are validated with well-resolved large-eddy simulation (LES) results and experimental wind tunnel data. Firstly, the wall-interference contribution in aerodynamic forces, as well as the local pressure coefficients, are assessed. Furthermore, the isolated effect of confinement is analyzed independent of the boundary-layer growth. Secondly, wall-alignment is modified as a calibration parameter in order to reduce wall-interference based on the aforementioned assessment. In the outlined method, we propose the use of linear inserts to account for the effect of wind tunnel walls, which are experimentally simple to realize. The use of these inserts in subsonic wind tunnels with moderate blockage ratio leads to very good agreement between free-flight and wind tunnel data, while this approach benefits from simple manufacturing and experimental realization.

The exact placement of the laminar–turbulent transition has a significant effect on relevant characteristics of the boundary layer and aerodynamics, such as drag, heat transfer and flow separation on e.g. wings and turbine blades. Tripping, which fixes the transition position, has been a valuable aid to wind-tunnel testing during the past 70 years, because it makes the transition independent of the local condition of the free-stream. Tripping helps to obey flow similarity for scaled models and serves as a passive control mechanism. Fundamental fluid-mechanics studies and many engineering developments are based on tripped cases. Therefore, it is essential for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to replicate the same forced transition, in spite of the advanced improvements in transition modelling. In the last decade, both direct numerical simulation (DNS) and large-eddy simulations (LES) include tripping methods in an effort to avoid the need for modeling the complex mechanisms associated with the natural transition process, which we would like to bring over to Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) turbulence models. This paper investigates the implementation and performance of such a technique in RANS and specifically in the $$k-\omega$$ SST model. This study assesses RANS tripping with three alternatives: First, a recent approach of turbulence generation, denoted as turbulence-injection method (kI), is evaluated and investigated through different test cases; second, a predefined transition point is used in a traditional transition model (denoted as IM method); and third a novel formulation combining the two previous methods is proposed, denoted $$\gamma -k$$ I. The model is compared with DNS, LES and experimental data in a variety of test cases ranging from a turbulent boundary layer on a flat plate to the three-dimensional (3D) flow over a wing section. The desired tripping is achieved at the target location and the simulation results compare very well with the reference results. With the application of the novel model, the challenging transition region can be excluded from a simulation, and consequently more reliable results can be provided.

Conditional averages are used to evaluate the effect of sweeps and ejections on amplitude modulation. This is done numerically with a direct numerical simulation (DNS) of a channel flow at friction Reynolds number $Re_τ = 1000$ in a minimal stream-wise unit (MSU). The amplitude-modulation map of such DNS is also compared to the one of a regular channel flow in a longer streamwise domain (LSD), in order to assess its validity for this study. The cheaper MSU is found to provide a good representation of the modulation phenomena in the LSD. As for conditional averages, the amplitude-modulation coefficient is conditioned on the sign of the large-scale fluctuations. Care must be exerted in defining such a coefficient, as the conditioned large-scale fluctuation has non-zero average, indeed as a consequence of conditioning. Both sweeps and ejections (positive and negative large-scale fluctuation events) are found to have a positive contribution to amplitude modulation in the buffer layer, and a negative one in the outer layer. The negative-modulation region is found to shrink in case of ejections, so that the positive-modulation region extends farther away from the wall. Two more conditional statistics are used to provide an alternative representation of amplitude modulation and insights into the characteristics of the large-scale structures.