An Empirical Wall Law for the Mean Velocity in Adverse Pressure Gradients

Abstract

An empirical wall law for the mean velocity in an adverse pressure gradient is presented, with the ultimate goal of aiming at the improvement of RANS turbulence models and wall functions. For this purpose a large database of turbulent boundary-layer flows in adverse pressure gradients from wind tunnel experiments is considered, and the mean velocity in the inner layer is analysed. The log law in the mean velocity is found to be a robust feature. The extent of the log-law region is reduced in ratio to the boundary layer thickness with increasing strength of the pressure gradient. An extended wall law emerges above the log law, extending up to the outer edge of the inner layer. An empirical correlation to describe the reduction of the log-law region is proposed, depending on the pressure-gradient parameter and on the Reynolds number in inner viscous scaling, whose functional form is motivated by similarity and scaling arguments. Finally, there is a discussion of the conjecture of the existence of a wall law for the mean velocity, which is governed mainly by local parameters and whose leading order effects are the pressure gradient and the Reynolds number, but whose details can be perturbed by higher-order local and history effects.