Modeling momentum and scalar transport in a wall-bounded turbulent flow

A mildly-heated turbulent boundary layer was studied to characterize the relationship between velocity structures and the scalar field. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) and a Malley probe (Malley et al., 1992) were used to simultaneously measure the velocity field and the streamwise gradients of the scalar field (Gordeyev et al., 2014) respectively. Two distinct velocity scales were identified to be correlated to scalar mixing by conditionally averaging the velocity field on the existence of a scalar gradient. Resolvent analysis was used to create simple models of these velocity scales (McKeon and Sharma, 2010) and to probe their interaction. Using a combination of structural conditional averaging and conditional averaging on the scalar gradient, significant interaction was observed between the two scales of interest, with behavior consistent with the general scale interaction described by amplitude modulation (Hutchins and Marusic, 2007). The study constructed a model of the velocity field that was correlated to streamwise scalar gradients in the outer boundary layer.