Spanwise turbulence structure over permeable walls

Abstract

Spanwise flow field measurements are carried out for turbulent flows in channels with permeable bottom walls by particle image velocimetry (PIV) to understand the effects of the wall permeability on turbulence structure near porous walls. The porous media used are three kinds of foamed ceramics which have the same porosities (0.8) but different permeabilities. The turbulent flow fields in spanwise planes are discussed using instantaneous and statistical measurement data. At a small permeability Reynolds number ($Re_{K}$), low-speed and high-speed streaks, which are similar to those of solid-wall turbulence, are observed near the walls while at a large$Re_{K}$the observed structure is very different from that of the solid-wall turbulence. It is found that the obtained spanwise scales of the structure can be reasonably correlated with the wall normal distance plus the zero-plane displacement which is estimated from the mean velocity profile. With the distribution profiles of the spanwise streak spacing and integral length scales, the transitional change of the turbulence structure over permeable walls is discussed.