Center for Environmental and Applied Fluid Mechanics Seminar

Description

The Center for Environmental and Applied Fluid Mechanics will present Theresa Saxton-Fox of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discussing "Dynamics and Models of Turbulent Boundary Layers, with Application to the Distortion of Optical Beams" in this week's CEAFM seminar, hosted by Dennice Gayme, of the Johns Hopkins Department of Mechanical Engineering.

ABSTRACT:
Our group performs targeted experiments to expand understanding of turbulent boundary layer dynamics and uses the results to inform reduced-order models of the boundary layer. In this talk, we consider particle image velocimetry data from a heated, incompressible turbulent boundary layer at Reynolds number Re_tau = 910 and use an aero-optic sensor to identify large temperature gradients in the flow. Multiple interacting turbulent structures are identified as correlated to large temperature gradients using a projection-based conditional averaging approach. Reduced-order models of the structures and their interactions are created using a resolvent analysis of the Navier-Stokes equations. The sensitivity of the model to the amplitude of the component modes is analyzed and appropriate weights are identified to generate a highly-simplified turbulent model for aero-optic control applications.