Supersonic turbulent flows over sinusoidal rough walls

TL;DR

This study uses direct numerical simulations to investigate how sinusoidal roughness on walls affects turbulence and shock patterns in supersonic channel flows, revealing significant differences based on roughness geometry.

Contribution

It provides detailed insights into the impact of 2D and 3D sinusoidal roughness on shock formation, turbulence, and entropy generation in supersonic flows, which was previously not well understood.

Findings

2D roughness generates strong oblique shock waves.

3D roughness produces weaker shocklets.

Roughness influences turbulence shear production and entropy generation.

Abstract

Direct numerical simulations were performed to characterize fully developed supersonic turbulent channel flows over isothermal rough walls. The effect of roughness was incorporated using a level-set/volume-of-fluid immersed boundary method. Turbulence statistics of five channel flows are compared, including one reference case with both walls smooth and four cases with smooth top walls and bottom walls with two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) sinusoidal roughnesses. Results reveal a strong dependence of the turbulence on the roughness topography and the associated shock patterns. Specifically, the 2D geometries generate strong oblique shock waves that propagate across the channel and are reflected back to the rough-wall side. These strong shocks are absent in the smooth-wall channel and are significantly weaker in cases with 3D roughness geometries, replaced by weak shocklets. At the impingement locations of the shocks on the top wall in the 2D roughness cases, localized augmentations of turbulence shear production are observed. Such regions of augmented production also exist for the 3D cases, at a much weaker level. The oblique shock waves are thought to be responsible for a more significant entropy generation for cases with 2D surfaces than those with 3D ones, leading to a higher irreversible heat generation and consequently higher temperature values in 2D roughness cases. In the present supersonic channels, the effects of roughness extend beyond the near-wall layer due to the shocks. This suggests that outer layer similarity may not fully apply to a rough-wall supersonic turbulent flow.