Turbulent structure at the midsection of an annular flow

Abstract

The turbulent flow in the midsection of an annular gap between two concentric tubes at Reynolds number of 59 200–90 800 based on hydraulic diameter (dh = 57 mm) and average velocity is experimentally investigated. Measurements are carried out using particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) and planar particle image velocimetry (PIV) with spatial resolution of 0.0068dh (size of the binning window) and 0.0129dh (size of the interrogation window), respectively. Both PTV and PIV results show that the location of maximum mean streamwise velocity (yU) does not coincide with the locations of zero shear stress (yuv), minimum streamwise velocity fluctuation (yu2), and minimum radial velocity fluctuation (yv2). The separation between yU and yuv is 0.013dh based on PTV while PIV underestimates the separation distance as 0.0063dh. Conditional averages of turbulent fluctuations based on the four quadrants across the annulus demonstrate that the inner and outer wall flows overlap in the midsection. In the midsection, the flow is subject to opposing sweep/ejection events originating from both the inner and outer walls. The opposite quadrant events of the two boundary layers cancel out at yuv while the local minimum of spatial correlation of u (maximum mixing of the two wall flows) occurs at yU. Investigation of the budget of Reynolds shear stress showed that production and advection terms act towards the coincidence of the yU and yuv while the dissipation term works against the coincidence of the two points. The location of 〈U〉max also overlaps with zero dissipation of 〈uv〉. The production of turbulent kinetic energy is slightly negative in the narrow region between yU and yuv. This negative production acts towards smoothing the mean velocity profile at the joint of the two wall flows by equalizing its curvature (∂2〈U〉/∂y2) on the two sides of yU. The small separation distance of the yU and yuv is associated with slight deviation from the fully developed condition.