Adverse-Pressure-Gradient Effects on Turbulent Boundary Layers: Statistics and Flow-Field Organization

This manuscripts presents a study on adverse-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layers under different Reynolds-number and pressure-gradient conditions. In this work we performed Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements supplemented with Large-Eddy Simulations in order to have a dataset covering a range of displacement-thickness-based Reynolds-number 2300 $$ 34000 and values of the Clauser pressure-gradient parameter β up to 2.4. The spatial resolution limits of PIV for the estimation of turbulence statistics have been overcome via ensemble-based approaches. A comparison between ensemble-correlation and ensemble Particle Tracking Velocimetry was carried out to assess the uncertainty of the two methods. The effects of β, Re and of the pressure-gradient history on turbulence statistics were assessed. A modal analysis via Proper Orthogonal Decomposition was carried out on the flow fields and showed that about 20% of the energy contribution corresponds to the first mode, while 40% of the turbulent kinetic energy corresponds to the first four modes with no appreciable dependence on β and Re within the investigated range. The topology of the spatial modes shows a dependence on the Reynolds number and on the pressure-gradient strength, in line with the results obtained from the analysis of the turbulence statistics. The contribution of the modes to the Reynolds stresses and the turbulence production was assessed using a truncated low-order reconstruction with progressively larger number of modes. It is shown that the outer peaks in the Reynolds-stress profiles are mostly due to large-scale structures in the outer part of the boundary layer.