Influence of Ridge Spacing, Ridge Width, and Reynolds Number on Secondary Currents in Turbulent Channel Flow Over Triangular Ridges

Abstract

Most studies of secondary currents (SCs) over streamwise aligned ridges have been performed for rectangular ridge cross-sections. In this study, secondary currents above triangular ridges are systematically studied using direct numerical simulations of turbulent channel flow. The influence of ridge spacing on flow topology, mean flow, and turbulence statistics is investigated at two friction Reynolds numbers, 550 and 1000. In addition, the effects of ridge width on SCs, which have not previously been considered for this ridge shape, are explored. The influence of SCs on shear stress statistics increases with increased ridge spacing until SCs fill the entire channel. One of the primary findings is that, for ridge configurations with pronounced secondary currents, shear stress statistics exhibit clear Reynolds number sensitivity with a significant growth of dispersive shear stress levels with Reynolds number. In contrast to rectangular ridges, no above-ridge tertiary flows are observed for the tested range of ridge widths. Flow visualisations of SCs reveal the existence of corner vortices that form at the intersection of the lateral ridge sides and the smooth-wall sections. These are found to gradually disappear as ridges increase in width. Premultiplied spectra of streamwise velocity fluctuations show strong dependency on the spanwise sampling location. Whereas spanwise averaged spectra show no strong modifications by SCs, a significant increase of energy levels emerges at higher wavelengths for spectra sampled at the spanwise locations that correspond to the centres of the secondary currents.