On the wake region of high-Reynolds-number turbulent boundary layers subject to adverse pressure gradients

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Hauptverfasser: Lozier, Mitchell, Zarei, Ahmad, Marusic, Ivan, Deshpande, Rahul
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Lozier, Mitchell
Zarei, Ahmad
Marusic, Ivan
Deshpande, Rahul
author_facet Lozier, Mitchell
Zarei, Ahmad
Marusic, Ivan
Deshpande, Rahul
contents The effect of a moderate adverse pressure gradient (APG) on the structure of a high-Reynolds-number turbulent boundary layer (TBL) was investigated experimentally using complementary multi-point measurements. Unlike many previous studies, the present work focuses on the wake region and aims to characterise the turbulent motions that are energised by local APG conditions. Simultaneous two-point hot-wire measurements of the streamwise velocity were used to estimate the linear coherence spectrum (LCS), quantifying the wall-normal coherence between a wake-region reference point and the rest of the TBL. LCS-based decomposition of the spectral energy and variance showed that motions coherent with the wake reference account for a significant part of the APG-induced increase at large time scales, but not all of the enhanced energy. The remaining increase is associated with relatively smaller-scale motions that are not correlated with the selected wake location. High-spatial-resolution snapshot PIV measurements were then used to examine this broader range of energetic motions, which are associated with spanwise vortices in the wake region. Spanwise vorticity statistics were evaluated over 0.2 < z/δ < 0.4, where the largest APG-induced change in spectral energy was observed. Under APG, both the mean and variance of spanwise vorticity increased significantly in this region, while swirling-strength distributions confirmed a relative increase in both the population and magnitude of spanwise vortices. Finally, dynamically significant clockwise rotating spanwise vortices were identified using different swirling-strength thresholds. Higher thresholds produced conditionally averaged velocity fields that best captured the key wake-region dynamics, motivating their use for vortex-based conditional averaging in future analyses.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_21872
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the wake region of high-Reynolds-number turbulent boundary layers subject to adverse pressure gradients
Lozier, Mitchell
Zarei, Ahmad
Marusic, Ivan
Deshpande, Rahul
Fluid Dynamics
The effect of a moderate adverse pressure gradient (APG) on the structure of a high-Reynolds-number turbulent boundary layer (TBL) was investigated experimentally using complementary multi-point measurements. Unlike many previous studies, the present work focuses on the wake region and aims to characterise the turbulent motions that are energised by local APG conditions. Simultaneous two-point hot-wire measurements of the streamwise velocity were used to estimate the linear coherence spectrum (LCS), quantifying the wall-normal coherence between a wake-region reference point and the rest of the TBL. LCS-based decomposition of the spectral energy and variance showed that motions coherent with the wake reference account for a significant part of the APG-induced increase at large time scales, but not all of the enhanced energy. The remaining increase is associated with relatively smaller-scale motions that are not correlated with the selected wake location. High-spatial-resolution snapshot PIV measurements were then used to examine this broader range of energetic motions, which are associated with spanwise vortices in the wake region. Spanwise vorticity statistics were evaluated over 0.2 < z/δ < 0.4, where the largest APG-induced change in spectral energy was observed. Under APG, both the mean and variance of spanwise vorticity increased significantly in this region, while swirling-strength distributions confirmed a relative increase in both the population and magnitude of spanwise vortices. Finally, dynamically significant clockwise rotating spanwise vortices were identified using different swirling-strength thresholds. Higher thresholds produced conditionally averaged velocity fields that best captured the key wake-region dynamics, motivating their use for vortex-based conditional averaging in future analyses.
title On the wake region of high-Reynolds-number turbulent boundary layers subject to adverse pressure gradients
topic Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21872