Study of Coherent Structures using Wavelet Analysis

摘要

Turbulence is important in many fields of engineering, for example in estimating drag or minimizing drag on surfaces. It is known that turbulent flows contain coherent structures, which implies that a turbulent shear flow can be decomposed into coherent structures and random motion. It is generally accepted that coherent structures are responsible for significant transport of mass, heat and momentum. This doctoral thesis presents and discusses a new algorithm to detect coherent structures based on Wavelet transformations, a transform similar to the Fourier transform but providing information on both frequency and scale. The new detection scheme does not require any predefined threshold or integration time, and its general performance is found to be very good. Wind tunnel experiments were performed to obtain data for analysis. Scalograms resulting from the Wavelet transform show clearly that coherent structures exist in turbulent flows. These structures are shown to contribute considerably to the shear stresses. The contribution from the organized motion to the normal stresses close to the wall appears to be considerably smaller. Direct Navier Stokes (DNS) channel flow seems to be more organized than Zero Pressure Gradient (ZPG) flows. The topology of ZPG flows was studied using a multiple hot wire arrangement and conditionally averaged streamlines based on detections from the Wavelet method are presented. It is shown that the coherent structures produce large amounts of both vorticity and strain at the detection point. 56 refs., 92 figs., 3 tabs.