Applicability of Taylor’s hypothesis in rough- and smooth-wall boundary layers

Abstract

The spatial structure of smooth- and rough-wall boundary layers is examined spectrally at approximately matched friction Reynolds number ($\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}^{+}\approx 12\,000$). For each wall condition, temporal and true spatial descriptions of the same flow are available from hot-wire anemometry and high-spatial-range particle image velocimetry, respectively. The results show that over the resolved flow domain, which is limited to a streamwise length of twice the boundary layer thickness, true spatial spectra of smooth-wall streamwise and wall-normal velocity fluctuations agree, to within experimental uncertainty, with those obtained from time series using Taylor’s frozen turbulence hypothesis (Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A, vol. 164, 1938, pp. 476–490). The same applies for the streamwise velocity spectra on rough walls. For the wall-normal velocity spectra, however, clear differences are observed between the true spatial and temporally convected spectra. For the rough-wall spectra, a correction is derived to enable accurate prediction of wall-normal velocity length scales from measurements of their time scales, and the implications of this correction are considered. Potential violations to Taylor’s hypothesis in flows above perturbed walls may help to explain conflicting conclusions in the literature regarding the effect of near-wall modifications on outer-region flow. In this regard, all true spatial and corrected spectra presented here indicate structural similarity in the outer region of smooth- and rough-wall flows, providing evidence for Townsend’s wall-similarity hypothesis (The Structure of Turbulent Shear Flow, vol. 1, 1956).