Air Entrainment and Surface Fluctuations in a Turbulent Ship Hull Boundary Layer

TL;DR

This study investigates air entrainment and surface fluctuations caused by turbulence in a ship hull boundary layer through experiments and direct numerical simulations, revealing mechanisms of bubble formation and wave breaking.

Contribution

It combines experimental measurements with DNS to identify and analyze air entrainment mechanisms and surface features in a turbulent boundary layer around a moving wall.

Findings

Breaking wave-like surface features observed in experiments.

Bubble size distribution shows a characteristic Hinze scale.

Multiple air entrainment mechanisms identified in simulations.

Abstract

The air entrainment due to the turbulence in a free surface boundary layer shear flow created by a horizontally moving vertical surface-piercing wall is studied through experiments and direct numerical simulations. In the experiments, a laboratory-scale device was built that utilizes a surface-piercing stainless steel belt that travels in a loop around two vertical rollers, with one length of the belt between the rollers acting as a horizontally-moving flat wall. To complement the experiments, Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of the two-phase boundary layer problem were carried out with the domain including a streamwise belt section simulated with periodic boundary conditions. Cinematic Laser-Induced Fluorescence (LIF) measurements of water surface profiles in two vertical planes oriented parallel to the belt surface (wall-parallel profiles) are presented and compared to previous measurements of profiles in a vertical plane oriented normal to the belt surface (wall-normal profiles). Additionally, photographic observations of air entrainment and measurements of air bubble size distributions and motions are reported herein. The bubble entrainment mechanisms are studied in detail through the results obtained by the DNS simulations. Free surface features resembling breaking waves and traveling parallel to the belt are observed in the wall-parallel LIF movies. These breaking events are thought to be one of the mechanisms by which the air is entrained into the underlying flow. The bubble size distribution is found to have a characteristic break in slope, similar to the Hinze scale previously observed in breaking waves. Finally, several entrainment mechanisms are found in the simulations and their prevalence in the free surface boundary layer is assessed.