The effect of spanwise heterogeneous surfaces on mixed convection in turbulent channels

TL;DR

This study uses direct numerical simulations to explore how spanwise heterogeneous surfaces influence turbulent mixed convection in channels, revealing delayed and altered flow structures due to surface ridges.

Contribution

It demonstrates how spanwise ridges affect flow organization and transition thresholds in turbulent mixed convection, a novel insight into surface heterogeneity effects.

Findings

Heterogeneous surfaces delay the formation of large-scale rolls.

Ridges promote earlier transition to convective cells at lower buoyancy.

Flow structures realign perpendicular to ridges as ridge spacing decreases.

Abstract

Turbulent mixed convection in channel flows with heterogeneous surfaces is studied using direct numerical simulations. The relative importance between buoyancy and shear effects, characterized by the bulk Richardson number $Ri_b$, is varied in order to cover the flow regimes of forced, mixed and natural convection, which are associated with different large-scale flow organization. The heterogeneous surface consists of streamwise-aligned ridges, which are known to induce secondary motion in case of forced convection. The large-scale streamwise rolls emerging under smooth-wall mixed convection conditions are significantly affected by the heterogeneous surfaces and their appearance is considerably reduced for dense ridge spacings. It is found that the formation of these rolls requires larger buoyancy forces than over smooth walls due to the additional drag induced by the ridges. Therefore, the transition from forced convection structures to rolls is delayed towards larger $Ri_b$ for spanwise heterogeneous surfaces. The influence of the heterogeneous surface on the flow organization of mixed convection is particularly pronounced in the roll-to-cell transition range, where ridges favor the transition to convective cells at significantly lower $Ri_b$. In addition, the convective cells are observed to align perpendicular to the ridges with decreasing ridge spacing. We attribute this reorganization to the fact that flow parallel to the ridges experience less drag than flow across the ridges, which is energetically more beneficial. Furthermore, we find that streamwise rolls exhibit very slow dynamics for $Ri_b=1$ and $Ri_b=3.2$ when the ridge spacing is in the order of the rolls' width. For these cases the up- and downdrafts of the rolls move slowly across the entire channel instead of being fixed in space as observed for the smooth-wall cases.