Visual observations on the amplification of artificial disturbances in turbulent shear flows
- 1 January 1983
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Physics of Fluids
- Vol. 26 (10) , 2801
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.864046
Abstract
The behavior of two‐dimensional periodic disturbances introduced artificially into turbulent shear flows is examined in a wind tunnel using flow visualization methods. It is found that when the wavelength of the disturbances is about 20 δ* in the case of the boundary layer on a flat plate and about 2.4 δ* in the case of the wake behind a circular cylinder, the disturbances are strongly amplified in the downstream direction, where δ* is the displacement thickness of the shear layer. The present experiments suggest that the large‐scale coherent motions in natural turbulent shear flows originate from the instability of the mean velocity distributions.Keywords
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