Eur. Phys. J. B 8, 463-475 (1999)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050713

An analysis of the destabilizing curvature effects on the turbulent flow over a rotating cylinder

Département de Physique, Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, 1060 Tunis, Tunisia

Received: 9 December 1997
Published online: 15 April 1999

Abstract

An analysis based on the available experimental data and second-order closures is made for a turbulent shear flow over a rotating cylinder in a quiescent fluid. The near-wall behaviour of the non-linear model for the pressure-strain correlation proposed by Speziale, Sarkar and Gatski [J. Fluid Mech. 245, 227 (1991)] is enlarged; and the methodology proposed by Lai and So [J. Fluid Mech. 221, 641 (1990)] is adopted to take into account the wall-effects. The radial profile of the curvature parameter, is examined in connection with the logarithmic law. It is shown that the log-layer is associated to the region where the mean velocity profile, V, is related to the power of the radial distance as Computations reveal that this region corresponds to the state with the most destabilizing curvature effects; which can be chararacterized by the minimum value of the parameter and not that one of the parameter firstly introduced by Bradshaw [J. Fluid Mech. 36, 171 (1969)] and extensively used to characterize the turbulence structure in curved flows.