Master-mode set of turbulent 3D channel flow

Abstract

Turbulent flow fields can be expanded into a series in a set of basic functions. Theterms of such series are often called modes. A master-mode-set is a subset of these modes, the time-history of which uniquely determines the time history of the entire turbulent flow provided that this flow is developed. In the present work the existence of the master-mode-set is demonstrated numerically for turbulent channel flow. The minimal size of a master-mode set and the rate of the process of the recovery of the entire flow from the master-mode set history are estimated. The velocity field corresponding to the minimal master-mode set is found to be a good approximation for mean velocity in the entire flow field. Mean characteristics involving velocity derivatives deviate in a very close vicinity to the wall, while master-mode two-point correlations exhibit unrealistic oscillations. This can be improved by using a larger than minimal master-mode set. The near-wall streaks are found to be contained in the velocity field corresponding to the minimal master-mode set, and the same is true at least for the large-scale part of the longitudinal vorticity structure. A database containing the time history of a master-mode set is demonstrated to be an efficient tool for investigating rare events in turbulent flows. In particular, a travelling-wave-like object was identified on the basis of the analysis of the database. Two master-mode-set databases of the time history of a turbulent channel flow are made available online at http://www.dnsdata.afm.ses.soton.ac.uk/. The services provided include the facility for the code uploaded by a user to be run on the server with an access to the data