The Calculation of Turbulent Boundary Layers on Spinning and Curved Surfaces

Abstract

The development of turbulent shear layers on rotating or curved surfaces is usually characterized by strong effects of streamline curvature on the turbulence structure. The present contribution deals with the calculation of these effects with a model of turbulence which solves transport equations for the turbulence kinetic energy and its local rate of dissipation. The direct effect of curvature in the model is limited to a single empirical coefficient whose magnitude is directly proportional to a Richardson number based on a time scale of the energy-containing eddies. (In the absence of significant streamline curvature the model reduces to a form that has earlier been extensively tested in various thin shear flows.) Finite difference computations are reported of the following turbulent flows: the boundary layer on concave and convex surfaces; fully developed flow in a curved channel; axisymmetric flow over a spinning cylinder; and heat and mass transfer due to spinning cones of various vertex angles. Agreement with experiment is satisfactorily close in all these cases.