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Wall roughness induces asymptotic ultimate turbulence

Nature Physics volume 14, pages 417–423 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Turbulence governs the transport of heat, mass and momentum on multiple scales. In real-world applications, wall-bounded turbulence typically involves surfaces that are rough; however, characterizing and understanding the effects of wall roughness on turbulence remains a challenge. Here, by combining extensive experiments and numerical simulations, we examine the paradigmatic Taylor–Couette system, which describes the closed flow between two independently rotating coaxial cylinders. We show how wall roughness greatly enhances the overall transport properties and the corresponding scaling exponents associated with wall-bounded turbulence. We reveal that if only one of the walls is rough, the bulk velocity is slaved to the rough side, due to the much stronger coupling to that wall by the detaching flow structures. If both walls are rough, the viscosity dependence is eliminated, giving rise to asymptotic ultimate turbulence—the upper limit of transport—the existence of which was predicted more than 50 years ago. In this limit, the scaling laws can be extrapolated to arbitrarily large Reynolds numbers.

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Fig. 1: Plume structures for smooth and rough Taylor-Couette turbulence.
Fig. 2: Global torque and friction factor scaling relations.
Fig. 3: Optimal transport peaks for smooth and rough cases.
Fig. 4: Local energy dissipation rate from simulations.
Fig. 5: Mean velocity profiles.
Fig. 6: Dependence on the roughness sparseness.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge V. Mathai for insightful discussions. We thank G. W. Bruggert and M. Bos, as well as G. Mentink and R. Nauta, for their technical support and D.P.M. van Gils and R. Ezeta for various discussions and help with the experiments. The work is financially supported by NWO-I, NWO-TTW, the Netherlands Center for Multiscale Catalytic Energy Conversion (MCEC), and a VIDI grant (No. 13477), all sponsored by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). C.S. acknowledges the financial support from Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 11672156. Part of the simulations were carried out on the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative. We also acknowledge PRACE for awarding us access to Marconi at CINECA, Italy under PRACE project number 2016143351 and DECI resource ARCHER UK National Supercomputing Service with the support from PRACE under project 13DECI0246.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Xiaojue Zhu and Ruben A. Verschoof.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics of Fluids Group and Max Planck Center Twente for Complex Fluid Dynamics, MESA+ Institute and J. M. Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Xiaojue Zhu, Ruben A. Verschoof, Dennis Bakhuis, Sander G. Huisman, Roberto Verzicco, Chao Sun & Detlef Lohse

  2. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Roma, Italy

    Roberto Verzicco

  3. Center for Combustion Energy, Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Chao Sun & Detlef Lohse

  4. Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany

    Detlef Lohse

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  1. Xiaojue Zhu
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Contributions

X.Z., S.G.H., R.A.V., R.V., C.S. and D.L. conceived the ideas. X.Z. performed the numerical simulations. R.A.V. and D.B. performed the measurements. X.Z. and R.A.V. analysed the data. X.Z., R.A.V. and D.L. wrote the paper. R.V., C.S. and D.L. supervised the project. All authors discussed the physics and proofread the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Chao Sun or Detlef Lohse.

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Zhu, X., Verschoof, R.A., Bakhuis, D. et al. Wall roughness induces asymptotic ultimate turbulence. Nature Phys 14, 417–423 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-017-0026-3

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