Bypass transition in boundary layers

Abstract eng:
The boundary layer above a flat plate exposed to free-stream turbulence becomes turbulent through the initiation of turbulent patches that spread as they are advected downstream. In order to model and describe the intermittency factor (a measures of the fraction of space that is filled with turbulence) we combine results on the receptivity of the boundary layer with nonlinear concepts developed in internal flows. The model gives a physically motivated expression for the spatial distribution of spot nucleation events that is then integrated into a probabilistic cellular automaton. The free parameters are fixed by fits to numerical simulations. The model reproduces the spatial variation of the intermittency factor for different turbulence levels. The results show how the recent theoretical progress on transitional wall-bounded flows can be extended to the much wider class of spatially developing boundary layers flow.

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