Relationship between wall pressure fluctuations and streamwise vortices in a turbulent boundary layer

Abstract

A direct numerical simulation is performed to examine the relationship between wall pressure fluctuations and near-wall streamwise vortices in a spatially developing turbulent boundary layer. It is found that wall pressure fluctuations are closely linked with the upstream quasistreamwise vortices in the buffer region. The maximum correlation occurs with the spanwise displacement from the location of wall pressure fluctuations. The space-time correlation reveals that wall pressure fluctuations lag behind streamwise vorticity in the upstream, while streamwise vorticity lag behind wall pressure fluctuations in the downstream. The contributions of high-amplitude wall pressure event to the turbulent energy production mechanism are examined by the quadrant analysis of Reynolds shear stress. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.