A spatiotemporal decomposition of a fully inhomogeneous turbulent flow field

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The three-dimensional orthogonal spatial modes and their temporal counterparts have been extracted from a large-eddy simulation of turbulent flow over a surface-mounted cube, using a space-time symmetric version of proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), proposed by Aubry et al. (1991). A relatively small domain of interest, located immediately above the top face of the flow obstacle, has been selected for the application of POD. Within that volume of interest, time records of the velocity field have been sampled at 6000 locations simultaneously. The space-time duality of POD can be demonstrated by deriving two alternative eigenvalue problems for either the orthogonal spatial modes or the orthogonal temporal modes. For a particular case, the choice between the two alternatives can be done on the basis of computational convenience and of data-storage requirements. The results show that the first spatiotemporal mode can be identified with the mean flow. The second spatiotemporal mode is dominated by the alternating vortex shedding from the side edges of the flow obstacle. A Fourier analysis of the second temporal mode leads to a Strouhal number of S=0.125 which corresponds to the measured Strouhal number for the vortex shedding (Martinuzzi, 1992). The third and the fourth spatiotemporal modes are connected with the rolls created at the horizontal leading edge of the cube. For the flow field investigated, the dual space-time point of view of POD is rather realistic in the sense that the first four spatiotemporal modes can actually be observed in the flow.