Consistency between the attached-eddy model and the inner-outer interaction model: a study of streamwise wall-shear stress fluctuations in a turbulent channel flow

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the consistency between the attached-eddy and inner-outer interaction models in describing streamwise wall-shear stress fluctuations in turbulent channel flow, advancing understanding of turbulence structures and aiding reduced-order modeling.

Contribution

It couples two fundamental turbulence models, validates their consistency, and introduces a Gaussian model for wall-shear stress distribution, enhancing turbulence modeling approaches.

Findings

Models are consistent and complement each other.

Superpositions of attached eddies follow an additive process.

A Gaussian model characterizes the wall-shear stress distribution.

Abstract

The inner-outer interaction model (Marusic, Mathis & Hutchins, Science, vol. 329, 2010, 193-196) and the attached-eddy model (Townsend, Cambridge University Press, 1976) are two fundamental models describing the multi-scale turbulence interactions and the organization of energy-containing motions in the logarithmic region of high-Reynolds number wall-bounded turbulence, respectively. In this paper, by coupling the additive description with the attached-eddy model, the generation process of streamwise wall-shear fluctuations, resulting from wall-attached eddies, is portrayed. Then, by resorting to the inner-outer interaction model, the streamwise wall-shear stress fluctuations generated by attached eddies in a turbulent channel flow are isolated. Direct comparison between the statistics from these two models demonstrates that they are consistent to and complement each other. Meanwhile, we further show that the superpositions of attached eddies follow an additive process strictly by verifying the validity of the strong and extended self similarity. Moreover, we propose a Gaussian model to characterize the instantaneous distribution of streamwise wall-shear stress, resulting from the attached-eddy superpositions. These findings are important for developing an advanced reduced-order wall model.