Direct numerical simulation of turbulent open channel flow: Streamwise turbulence intensity scaling and its relation to large-scale coherent motions

Abstract

We conducted direct numerical simulations of turbulent open channel flow (OCF) and closed channel flow (CCF) of friction Reynolds numbers up to Ret=900 in large computational domains up to Lx=12pi h, Lz=4 pi h, to analyse the Reynolds number scaling of turbulence intensities. Unlike CCF, our data suggests that the streamwise turbulence intensity in OCF scales with the bulk velocity for Ret >=400. The additional streamwise kinetic energy in OCF with respect to CCF is provided by larger and more intense very-large-scale motions in the former type of flow. Therefore, compared to CCF, larger computational domains of Lx=12pi h, Lz=4 pi h are required to faithfully capture very-large-scale motions in OCF-and observe the reported scaling. OCF and CCF turbulence statistics data sets are available at https://doi.org/10.4121/88678f02-2a34-4452-8534-6361fc34d06b.