Reynolds number effects on the Reynolds-stress budgets in turbulent channels

Abstract

Budgets for the nonzero components of the Reynolds-stress tensor are presented for numerical channels with Reynolds numbers in the range Reτ ≤180–2000. The scaling of the different terms is discussed, both above and within the buffer and viscous layers. Above (x_2^+)≈150, most budget components scale reasonably well with u_t^3/h, but the scaling with (u_t^4)/v is generally poor below that level. That is especially true for the dissipations and for the pressure-related terms. The former is traced to the effect of the wall-parallel large-scale motions, and the latter to the scaling of the pressure itself. It is also found that the pressure terms scale better near the wall when they are not separated into their diffusion and deviatoric components, but mostly only because the two terms tend to cancel each other in the viscous sublayer. The budgets, together with their statistical uncertainties, are available electronically from http://torroja.dmt.upm.es/channels.