A COMPARATIVE-STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF CURVATURE ON THE BOUNDARY-LAYERS AND ON THE INNER REGION OF WALL JETS

In this paper, the differences in the curvature effects on turbulent b oundary layers and on the inner region of turbulent wall jets are disc ussed. Both convex and concave curvature effects are considered. The c omparison shows that the magnitudes of the various turbulent component s are altered very differently for the two class of turbulent shear fl ows. In the boundary layers, it is mainly the centrifugal instability through which the curvature effects manifest themselves, whereas for w all jets there is the additional influence of the turbulence levels in the outer region which caps the inner region. Though, both the bounda ry layer and the inner region of a wall jet have very similar mean vel ocity distribution, the turbulence characteristics and their response to curvature effects are seen to be much different.