Effects of small streamline curvature on turbulent duct flow

Abstract

Mean velocity profiles, turbulence intensity distributions and streamwise energy spectra are presented for turbulent air flow in a smooth-walled, high aspect ratio rectangular duct with small streamwise curvature, and are compared with measurements taken in a similar straight duct.The results for the present curved flow are found to differ significantly from those for the more highly curved flows reported previously, and suggest the need to distinguish between ‘shear-dominated’ flows with small curvature and ‘inertia-dominated’ flows with high curvature. Velocity defect and angular-momentum defect hypotheses fail to correlate the central-region mean flow data, but the wall-region data are consistent with the conventional straight-wall similarity hypothesis. A secondary flow of Taylor–Goertler vortex pattern is found to occur in the central flow region.An examination of the flow equations yields a model for the mechanisms by which streamline curvature affects turbulent flow, in which a major effect is a direct change in the turbulent shear stress through a conservative reorientation of the turbulence intensity components. Data for the streamwise and transverse turbulence intensities show behaviour consistent with that expected from the equations, and the distribution of total turbulence energy in the central flow region is found to be nearly invariant with Reynolds number and wall curvature, in agreement with the model.Energy spectra for the streamwise component are examined in terms of a Townsend-type two-component turbulence model. They indicate that a universal, ‘active’ component exists in all flow regions, with an ‘inactive’ component which affects only the low wavenumber spectra intensities. This is taken to imply that the effects of streamline curvature are determined by the central-region flow structure alone.