ALBERT

Description: Most turbulent coherent structures in a convectively unstable atmospheric boundary layer are caused by or manifested in ascending warm fluid and descending cold fluids. These structures not only cause ramps in the air temperature timeseries, but also imprint on the underlying solid surface as surface temperature fluctuations. The coupled flow and heat transport mechanism was examined through direct numerical simulation (DNS) of a channel flow allowing for realistic solid-fluid thermal coupling. The thermal activity ratio (TAR; the ratio of thermal inertias of fluid and solid), and the thickness of the solid domain were found to affect the solid-fluid interfacial temperature variations. The solid-fluid interface with large (small) thermal activity ration behaves as an isoflux (isothermal) boundary. For the range of parameters considered here (Grashof number, Gr = 3 × 105 - 325 × 105; TAR = 0.01-1; solid thickness normalized by heat penetration = 0.1-10), the solid thermal properties and thickness influence the fluid temperature only in the viscous or conduction region while the convective forcing influences the turbulent flow. Flow structures influence the interfacial temperature more effectively with increasing TAR and solid thickness compared with a constant temperature boundary condition. The change of channel flow structures with increasing convective instability is examined and the concomitant change of thermal patterns is quantified. Despite large differences in friction Reynolds and Richardson number between the DNS and atmospheric observations, similarities in the flow features were observed. © 2014 Cambridge University Press.

Description: In a convective boundary layer, coherent structures were detected through their thermal signature on an artificial turf surface using high-frequency thermal infrared (TIR) imagery and surface layer turbulence measurements. The coherent structures cause surface temperature variations over tens of seconds and spatial scales of tens to a few hundred meters. Evidence of processes similar to those in a renewal event was observed. Spatial and temporal correlation analysis revealed the geometric and velocity information of the structures at the ground footprint of air temperature measurements. The velocity of the coherent structures was consistent with the wind speed at 6.5 m AGL. Practical implications of turbulence-driven surface temperature variability for thermal remote sensing are also discussed.

Description: The effect of terrain heterogeneities in one-point measurements is a continuous subject of discussion. Here we focus on the order of magnitude of the advection term in the equation of the evolution of temperature as generated by documented terrain heterogeneities and we estimate its importance as a term in the surface energy budget (SEB), for which the turbulent fluxes are computed using the eddy-correlation method. The heterogeneities are estimated from satellite and model fields for scales near 1 km or broader, while the smaller scales are estimated through direct measurements with remotely piloted aircraft and thermal cameras and also by high-resolution modelling. The variability of the surface temperature fields is not found to decrease clearly with increasing resolution, and consequently the advection term becomes more important as the scales become finer. The advection term provides non-significant values to the SEB at scales larger than a few kilometres. In contrast, surface heterogeneities at the metre scale yield large values of the advection, which are probably only significant in the first centimetres above the ground. The motions that seem to contribute significantly to the advection term in the SEB equation in our case are roughly those around the hectometre scales.

Description: The numerical simulation of many aerodynamic non-periodic flows of practical interest involves discretized computational domains that often must be artificially truncated. Appropriate boundary conditions are required at these truncated domain boundaries, and ideally, these boundary conditions should be perfectly "absorbing" or "nonreflecting" so that they do not contaminate the flow field in the interior of the domain. The proper specification of these boundaries is critical to the stability, accuracy, convergence, and quality of the numerical solution, and has been the topic of considerable research. The need for accurate boundary specification has been underscored in recent years with efforts to apply higher-fidelity methods (DNS, LES) in conjunction with high-order low-dissipation numerical schemes to realistic flow configurations. One of the most popular choices for specifying these boundaries is the characteristics-based boundary condition where the linearized flow field at the boundaries are decomposed into characteristic waves using either one-dimensional Riemann or other multi-dimensional Riemann approximations. The values of incoming characteristics are then suitably modified. The incoming characteristics are specified at the in flow boundaries, and at the out flow boundaries the variation of the incoming characteristic is zeroed out to ensure no reflection. This, however, makes the problem ill-posed requiring the use of an ad-hoc parameter to allow small reflections that make the solution stable. Generally speaking, such boundary conditions work reasonably well when the characteristic flow direction is normal to the boundary, but reflects spurious energy otherwise. An alternative to the characteristic-based boundary condition is to add additional "buffer" regions to the main computational domain near the artificial boundaries, and solve a different set of equations in the buffer region in order to minimize acoustic reflections. One approach that has been used involves modeling the pressure fluctuations as acoustic waves propagating in the far-field relative to a single noise-source inside the buffer region. This approach treats vorticity-induced pressure fluctuations the same as acoustic waves. Another popular approach, often referred to as the "sponge layer," attempts to dampen the flow perturbations by introducing artificial dissipation in the buffer region. Although the artificial dissipation removes all perturbations inside the sponge layer, incoming waves are still reflected from the interface boundary between the computational domain and the sponge layer. The effect of these refkections can be somewhat mitigated by appropriately selecting the artificial dissipation strength and the extent of the sponge layer. One of the most promising variants on the buffer region approach is the Perfectly Matched Layer (PML) technique. The PML technique mitigates spurious reflections from boundaries and interfaces by dampening the perturbation modes inside the buffer region such that their eigenfunctions remain unchanged. The technique was first developed by Berenger for application to problems involving electromagnetic wave propagation. It was later extended to the linearized Euler, Euler and Navier-Stokes equations by Hu and his coauthors. The PML technique ensures the no-reflection property for all waves, irrespective of incidence angle, wavelength, and propagation direction. Although the technique requires the solution of a set of auxiliary equations, the computational overhead is easily justified since it allows smaller domain sizes and can provide better accuracy, stability, and convergence of the numerical solution. In this paper, the PML technique is developed in the context of a high-order spectral-element Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method. The technique is compared to other approaches to treating the in flow and out flow boundary, such as those based on using characteristic boundary conditions and sponge layers. The superiority of the current PML technique over other approaches is demonstrated for a range of test cases, viz., acoustic pulse propagation, convective vortex, shear layer flow, and low-pressure turbine cascade flow. The paper is structured as follows. We first derive the PML equations from the non{linear Euler equations. A short description of the higher-order DG method used is then described. Preliminary results for the four test cases considered are then presented and discussed. Details regarding current work that will be included in the final paper are also provided.

Description: A new computational capability under development for accurate and efficient high-fidelity direct numerical simulation (DNS) and large eddy simulation (LES) of turbomachinery is described. This capability is based on an entropy-stable Discontinuous-Galerkin spectral-element approach that extends to arbitrarily high orders of spatial and temporal accuracy and is implemented in a computationally efficient manner on a modern high performance computer architecture. A validation study using this method to perform DNS of flow in a low-pressure turbine airfoil cascade are presented. Preliminary results indicate that the method captures the main features of the flow. Discrepancies between the predicted results and the experiments are likely due to the effects of freestream turbulence not being included in the simulation and will be addressed in the final paper.

Description: No abstract available

Description: The accurate prediction of wall-roughness effects in turbomachinery is becoming critical as turbine designers address airfoil surface quality and degradation concerns arising from the shift to advanced ceramic matrix composite (CMC) or additively-manufactured airfoils operating in higher temperature environments. In this paper, a recently developed computational capability for accurate and efficient scale-resolving simulations of turbomachinery is extended to analyze the boundary- layer separation and transition characteristics in a rough-wall low-pressure turbine (LPT) cascade. The computational capability is based on an entropy-stable discontinuous-Galerkin spectral-element approach that extends to arbitrarily high orders of spatial and temporal accuracy, and is implemented in an efficient manner for a modern high performance computer architecture. Results from the scale-resolving simulations of both smooth and rough airfoil cascades are presented and compared to previous experiments and numerical simulations. The results show that the suction surface boundary layer undergoes laminar separation, transition, and turbulent reattachment for the smooth airfoil cascade, while in the presence of roughness the separation and transition behavior of the suction surface boundary layer is substantially modified. The differences between the smooth and rough airfoil cascades are then highlighted by a detailed analysis of their respective turbulent flow fields.