Effect of straight riblets of the underlying surface on wall bounded flow drag

Abstract

Direct numerical simulations of thin, straight riblets were conducted to investigate the physical mechanisms involved when the inertial effects within the ribs become important. The main parameter that we assess here is the ribs’ height to spacing ratio (a=h/s). In all cases, ‘k’-type behaviour was observed despite the absence of the pressure drag component. This trend also refers to the destruction of the near-wall cycles and was indicated by the shortening of Reynolds stress structures, mimicking the flows over rough walls. Closely-packed ribs with large h/s have a tendency to generate Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) like structures at the tips, inducing large pressure fluctuations. Conversely, sparser ribs with low h/s trigger the formation of large mean secondary flows that suppress the pressure fluctuations. We further split the drag contribution of these distinct flow features by decomposing the roughness function into the dispersive and the Reynolds-stress terms. This analysis concludes that the fully-rough (logarithmic) scaling within the drag-increasing regime is transitional, and as the Reynolds number increases, deviates to a more gradual power-law scaling due to the drag increasing mechanism of streamwise aligned secondary motions.