Jgm. Eggels et al., FULLY-DEVELOPED TURBULENT PIPE-FLOW - A COMPARISON BETWEEN DIRECT NUMERICAL-SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENT, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 268, 1994, pp. 175-209
Direct numerical simulations (DNS) and experiments are carried out to
study fully developed turbulent pipe flow at Reynolds number Re(c) alm
ost-equal-to 7000 based on centreline velocity and pipe diameter. The
agreement between numerical and experimental results is excellent for
the lower-order statistics (mean flow and turbulence intensities) and
reasonably good for the higher-order statistics (skewness and flatness
factors). To investigate the differences between fully developed turb
ulent flow in an axisymmetric pipe and a plane channel geometry, the p
resent DNS results are compared to those obtained from a channel flow
simulation. Beside the mean flow properties and turbulence statistics
up to fourth order, the energy budgets of the Reynolds-stress componen
ts are computed and compared. The present results show that the mean v
elocity profile in the pipe fails to conform to the accepted law of th
e wall, in contrast to the channel flow. This confirms earlier observa
tions reported in the literature. The statistics on fluctuating veloci
ties, including the energy budgets of the Reynolds stresses, appear to
be less affected by the axisymmetric pipe geometry. Only the skewness
factor of the normal-to-the-wall velocity fluctuations differs in the
pipe flow compared to the channel flow. The energy budgets illustrate
that the normal-to-the-wall velocity fluctuations in the pipe are alt
ered owing to a different 'impingement' or 'splatting' mechanism close
to the curved wall.