Predicting Transition Without Empiricism or DNS

Abstract

A numerical procedure for predicting the receptivity of laminar boundary layers to freestream turbulence consisting of vortex arrays with arbitrary orientation has been developed. Results show that the boundary layer is most receptivity to those vortices which have their axes approximately in the streamwise direction and vortex wavelengths of approximately 1.2 δ. The computed near wall gains for isotropic turbulence are similar in magnitude to previously published experimental values used to predict transition. The new procedure is therefore capable of predicting the development of the fluctuations in the laminar boundary layer from values of the freestream turbulence intensity and length scale, and hence determining the start of transition without resorting to any empirical correlation.