Turbulent gas-solid flows are readily encountered in many industrial and environmental processes. The development of a generic modeling technique for gas-solid turbulent flows remains a significant challenge in the field of mechanical engineering. Eulerian models are typically used to model large systems of particles. In this dissertation, a numerical analysis was carried out to assess a current state-of-the-art Eulerian two-fluid model for fully-developed turbulent gas-solid upward flow in a vertical pipe. The two-fluid formulation of Bolio et al. (1995) was adopted for the current study and the drag force was considered as the dominant interfacial force between the solids and fluid phase. In the first part of the thesis, a two-equation low Reynolds number k-ε model was used to predict the fluctuating velocities of the gas-phase which uses an eddy viscosity model. The stresses developed in the solids-phase were modeled using kinetic theory and the concept of granular temperature was used for the prediction of the solids velocity fluctuation. The fluctuating drag, i.e., turbulence modulation term in the transport equation of the turbulence kinetic energy and granular temperature was used to capture the effect of the presence of the dispersed solid particles on the gas-phase turbulence. The current study documents the performance of two popular turbulence modulation models of Crowe (2000) and Rao et al. (2011). Both models were capable of predicting the mean velocities of both the phases which were generally in good agreement with the experimental data. However, the phenomena that small particles cause turbulence suppression and large particles cause turbulence enhancement was better captured by the model of Rao et al. (2011); conversely, the model of Crowe (2000) produced turbulence enhancement in all cases. Rao et al. (2011) used a modified wake model originally proposed by Lun (2000) which is activated when the particle Reynolds number reaches 150. This enables the overall model to produce turbulence suppression and augmentation that follows the experimental trend. The granular temperature predictions of both models show good agreement with the limited experimental data of Jones (2001). The model of Rao et al. (2011) was also able to capture the effect of gas-phase turbulence on the solids velocity fluctuation for three-way coupled systems. However, the prediction of the solids volume fraction which depends on the value of the granular temperature shows noticeable deviations with the experimental data of Sheen et al. (1993) in the near-wall region. Both turbulence modulation models predict a flat profile for the solids volume fraction whereas the measurements of Sheen et al. (1993) show a significant decrease near the wall and even a particle-free region for flows with large particles. The two-fluid model typically uses a low Reynolds number k-ε model to capture the near-wall behavior of a turbulent gas-solid flow. An alternative near-wall turbulence model, i.e., the two-layer model of Durbin et al. (2001) was also implemented and its performance was assessed. The two-layer model is especially attractive because of its ability to include the effect of surface roughness. The current study compares the predictions of the two-layer model for both clear gas and gas-solid flows to the results of a conventional low Reynolds number model. The effects of surface roughness on the turbulence kinetic energy and granular temperature were also documented for gas-particle flows in both smooth and rough pipes.

La compréhension de la dynamique de la turbulence de paroi a déjà fait l'objet de nombreuses études expérimentales et numériques depuis des décennies. Le principal intérêt pratique de ces études tient au fait que la contrainte de cisaillement pariétale (et donc le frottement) est étroitement liée à la dynamique des structures à la proximité de la paroi. Les techniques expérimentales en mécanique des fluides ont également fait de grands progrès ces dernières années. Ce travail présente le développement d'une méthode expérimentale visant à fournir des mesures 3D-3C de l´écoulement dans la région de très proche paroi, en vue de mesurer la contrainte de cisaillement à la paroi avec une précision améliorée. Dans ce but, une technique originale de Vélocimétrie Holographique par Images de Particules a été mise au point. Les mesures sont effectuées dans un petit volume à proximité de la paroi dans la soufflerie au Laboratoire de Mécanique de Lille. Des mesures détaillées dans un de l’ordre de 1.5mm3 sont rendues possibles grâce l'utilisation d'un objectif de microscope pour l'agrandissement du champ objet. Les particules sont éclairées par le côté, la lumière diffusée a 90o se recombine avec l'onde de référence pour un enregistrement holographique en ligne de type Gabor. Une procédure d'étalonnage a été développée afin de relier l'espace de reconstruction de l’image holographique aux coordonnées dans le volume de mesure. L'analyse des résultats montre que les images de particules sont reconstruites avec une très bonne résolution axiale, ce qui conduit à penser que la configuration est bien adapté à cette type de mesure. Ces résultats montrent également qu’une optimisation et des ajustements sont nécessaires pour d'améliorer les résultats de suivi de particules / Continuously improving the understanding of wall turbulence dynamics has been the goal of many experimental and numerical studies for decades. The main practical aspect that makes this knowledge so crucial is the fact that the wall shear stress is closely related to the dynamics of the near-wall structures. Experimental techniques in fluid mechanics have also experienced a great amount of advances in recent years. The present work details the development of an experimental configuration aimed at providing 3D-3C flow measurements in the very near-wall region of a large wind tunnel facility, leading to the assessment of the wall shear stress with improved accuracy. With that goal, a technique known as Holographic Particle Image Velocimetry is used, and measurements are made in small volumes close to the wall in the wind tunnel at Laboratoire de Mécanique de Lille. Full measurements in volumes as small as 1.5mm3 are made possible with the use of a microscope objective for magnification of the object field. Particles are illuminated from the side and the 90o scattered field recombines with reference wave for holographic inline recording. A calibration procedure is performed in order to relate reconstruction space coordinates to real measurement volume coordinates. Analysis of resulting particle fields shows that particle images reconstruct with very good axial accuracy, leading to believe that the configuration is indeed suited for this type of measurement. However, some optimization and adjustments are needed in order to improve the particle tracking results

Wall-dominated turbulent dispersed multiphase flows occur in a variety of industrial, biological and environmental applications. The complex nature of the  arrier and the dispersed phase is elevated to a higher level introducing geometrical complexities such as curved walls. Realising such flows and particulate phases poses challenging problems both from computational and also physical point of view. The present thesis tries to address some of these issues Lagrangian computational frame. In the first step, turbulent flow in straight pipes is simulated by means ofdirect numerical simulation with a spectrally accurate code nek5000 to examine the Reynolds number effect on turbulent statistics. Adding the effect of the curvature to these canonical turbulent pipe flows generates Prandtl’s secondary motion of first kind. These configurations, as primary complex geometries in this study, are examined by means of statistical analysis to unfold the evolutionof turbulent characteristics from a straight pipe configuration. A fundamentally different Prandtl’s secondary motion of second kind is also put to test by means of adding the side-walls to a canonical turbulent channel flow and the evolution of various statistical quantities with varying the duct aspect ratios is discussed. After having obtained a characterisation of the turbulent flow in the geometries of bent pipes and ducts, the dispersion of small heavy particles is modelled in the bent pipe by means of point particles which are one-way coupled to the flow. For this purpose a parallel Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) scheme is implemented in the spectral-element code nek5000. Its numerical accuracy, parallel scalability and general performance in realistic situations are scrutinised in various situations. Also, the resulting particle fields are analysed, showing that even a small degree of geometrical curvature has a profound impact on the particle concentration maps. For each of the aforementioned turbulent flow cases new and challenging questions have arisen to be addressed in the present and upcoming research works. Along with an improved understanding of the particle dispersion in the considered complex geometries, the current project is particularly intended to improve the numerical aspects of the current LPT module suitable for largescale computations. / <p>QC 20140226</p>

In comparison to the flow in a rigid channel, there is a multi-fold reduction in the transition Reynolds number for the flow in a micro channel when one of the walls is made sufficiently soft, due to a dynamical instability induced by the fluid-wall coupling. The flow after transition is characterized using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) in the x − y plane where x is the stream-wise direction and y is the cross-stream co-ordinate along the small dimension of the channel of height 0.2 − 0.3mm. For the two different soft walls of shear modulus 18 kPa and 2.19 kPaused here, the transition Reynolds number is about 250 and 330 respectively. The deformation of the microchannel due to the applied pressure gradient is measured in the experiments, and is used to predict the laminar mean velocity profiles for comparison with the experimental results. The mean velocity profiles in the microchannel are in quantitative agreement with those predicted for the laminar flow before transition, but are flatter near the centerline and have higher gradients at the wall after transition. The flow after transition is characterized by a mean velocity profile that is flatter at the center and steeper at the walls in comparison to that for a laminar flow. The root mean square of the stream-wise fluctuating velocity shows the characteristic sharp increase from the wall and a maximum close to the wall, as observed in turbulent flows in rigid-walled channels. However, the profile is asymmetric with a significantly higher maximum close to the soft wall in comparison to that close to the hard wall, and the Reynolds stress is found to be non-zero at the soft wall, indicating that there is a stress exerted by fluid velocity fluctuations on the wall. The turbulent energy production profile has a maximum at the soft wall, in contrast to the flow at a rigid surface where the turbulent energy production is zero at the wall (due to the zero Reynolds stress). The maximum of the root mean square of the velocity fluctuations and the Reynolds stress (divided by the fluid density) in the soft-walled microchannel for Reynolds numbers in the range 250-400, when scaled by suitable powers of the maximum velocity, are comparable to those in a rigid channel at Reynolds numbers in the range 5000-20000. The near-wall velocity profile shows no evidence of a viscous sub-layer for (yv∗/ν) as low as 2, but there is a logarithmic layer for (yv∗/ν) up to about 30, where the von Karman constants are very deferent from those for a rigid-walled channel. Here, v∗ is the friction velocity, ν is the kinematic viscosity and y is the distance from the soft surface. . The surface of the soft wall in contact with the fluid is marked with dye spots to monitor the deformation and motion along the fluid-wall interface. The measured displacement of the surface in the stream-wise direction, which is of the order of 5 − 12µm, is consistent with that calculated on the basis of linear elasticity. Low-frequency oscillations in the displacement of the surface are observed after transition in both the stream-wise and span-wise directions, indicating that the turbulent velocity fluctuations are dynamically coupled to motion in the solid. Modification of soft-wall turbulence in a micro channel due to the addition of small amounts of polymer The modification of soft-wall turbulence in a microchannel due to the addition of small amounts of polymer is experimentally studied using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) to measure the mean and the fluctuating velocities. The micro channels are of rectangular cross-section with height about 160 µm, width about 1.5 mm and length about 3 cm, with three walls made of hard Poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) gel, and one wall made of soft PDMS gel with an elasticity modulus of about 18 kPa. A dynamical instabilty of the laminar flow due to the fluid-wall coupling, and a transition to turbulence, is observed at a Reynolds number of about 290 for the flow of pure water in the soft-walled microchannel (Verma and Kumaran, J. Fluid Mech., 727, 407-455, 2013). Solutions of polyacrylamide of molecular weight 5 × 106 and mass fraction up to 50 ppm, and of molecular weight 4 × 104 and mass fraction up to 1500 ppm, are used in the experiments. In all cases, the solutions are in the dilute limit be-low the critical concentration where the interactions between polymer molecules become important. The modification of the fluid viscosity due to addition of polymer molecules is small; the viscosity of the solutions with the highest polymer concentration exceed those for pure water by about 10% for the polymer with molecular weight 5 × 106, and by about 5% for the polymer with molecular weight 4 × 104. Two distinct types of flow modifications below and above a threshold mass fraction for the polymer, cTHRESHOLD , which is about 1 ppm for the polyacrylamide with molecular weight 5 × 106, and about 500 ppm for the polyacrylamide with molecular weight 4 × 104. As the polymer mass fraction increases up to the threshold value, there is no change in the transition Reynolds number, but there is significant turbulence attenuation the root mean square velocities in the stream wise and cross-stream directions decrease by a factor of 2, and the Reynolds stress decreases by a factor of 4 in comparison to that for pure water. When the polymer concentration increases beyond the threshold value, there is a decrease in the decrease in the transition Reynolds number by nearly one order of magnitude, and a further decrease in the intensity of the turbulent fluctuations. The lowest transition Reynolds number of about 35 for the solution of polyacrylamide with molecular weight 5 × 106 and mass fraction 50 ppm. For the polymer solutions with the highest concentrations, the fluctuating velocities in the stream wise and cross-stream direction are lower by a factor of 5, and the Reynolds stress is lower by a factor of 10, in comparison to pure water. Despite the significant turbulence attenuation, a sharp increase in the intensity of the fluctuating velocities is evident at transition for all polymer concentrations. Transitions to deferent kinds of turbulence in a channel with soft walls The flow in a rectangular channel with walls made of soft polyacrylamide gel is studied to examine the effect of soft walls on transition and turbulence. The width of the channel is much larger than the height, so that the flow can be considered approximately two-dimensional, the wall thickness is much larger than the channel height (smallest dimension), the bottom wall is fixed to a substrate and the top wall is unrestrained. The fluid velocity is measured using Particle Image Velocimetry, while the wall motion is studied by embedding beads in the soft wall, and measuring the time-variation of the displacement both parallel and perpendicular to the surface. As the Reynolds number increases, two different flow regimes are observed in sequence. The first is the ‘soft-wall turbulence’ resulting from a dynamical instability of the base flow due to the fluid-wall coupling. The flow in this case exhibits many of the features of the turbulent flow in a rigid channel, including the departure of the velocity profile from the parabolic profile, and the near-wall maxima in the stream-wise root mean square fluctuating velocity. However, there are also significant differences. The turbulence intensities, when scaled by suitable powers of the mean velocity, are much larger than those after the hard-wall laminar-turbulent transition at a Reynolds number of about 1000. The Reynolds stress profiles do not decrease to zero at the walls, indicating that the wall motion plays a role in the generation of turbulent fluctuations. There is no evidence of a viscous sub-layer close to the wall to within the experimental resolution. The mean velocity profile does satisfy a logarithmic law close to the surface within a region between 2-30 wall units from the surface, but the von Karman constants are very different from those for the hard-wall turbulence. The wall displacement measurements indicate that there is no observable motion perpendicular to the surface, but displacement fluctuations parallel to the surface are observed after transition, coinciding with the onset of velocity fluctuations in the fluid. The fluid velocity fluctuations are symmetric about the center line of the channel, and they show relatively little downstream variation after a flow development length of about 5 cm. As the Reynolds number is further increased, there is a second ‘wall flutter’ transition, which involves visible downstream traveling waves in the top (unrestrained) wall alone. Wall displacement fluctuations of low frequency (less than about 500 rad/s) are observed both parallel and perpendicular to the wall. The mean velocity profiles and turbulence intensities are asymmetric, with much larger turbulence intensities near the top wall. There is no evident logarithmic profile close to either the top or bottom wall. Fluctuations are initiated at the entrance of the test section, and the fluctuation intensities decrease with downstream distance, the fluctuation intensities first rapidly increase and then decrease as the Reynolds number is increased. For a channel with relatively small height (0.6 mm), the transition Reynolds number for the soft-wall instability is lower the hard-wall transition Reynolds number of about 1000, and the laminar flow becomes unstable to the soft-wall instability leading to soft-wall turbulence and then to wall flutter as the Reynolds number is increased. For a channel with relatively large height (1.8 mm), the transition Reynolds number for the soft-wall instability is higher than 1000, the flow first undergoes the hard-wall laminar-turbulent transition at a Reynolds number of about 1000, the turbulent flow undergoes the soft-wall transition leading to soft-wall turbulence, and then to wall flutter.

Un code de résolution des équations de Navier-Stokes pour un fluide incompressible a été développé en utilisant une approche mixte spectral/différences finies, compatible avec une mise en oeuvre dans un environnement massivement parallèle. On procède, grâce à ce nouvel outil, à des simulations directes de la turbulence dans une configuration où l'agitation est synthétisée à l'aide d'un forçage aléatoire. La production de turbulence est confinée dans une couche centrale du domaine et s'auto-diffuse en direction d'une surface libre ou d'une paroi adhérente. Dans cette configuration on obtient un état statistiquement stationnaire où le cisaillement moyen, généralement à l'origine de la production de la turbulence, est nul. Ces conditions permettent de mieux comprendre l'origine du transfert intercomposantes, caractéristique de la partie lente du terme de corrélation pression-déformation dans les équations-bilan des tensions de Reynolds. L'accent est mis sur l'analyse de ce transfert lorsqu'il s'effectue sous l'influence de l'effet de blocage au voisinage d'une surface. Les résultats obtenus permettront de mieux appréhender la modélisation des termes de corrélation pression-déformation au voisinage d'une paroi dans les modèles de fermeture au second ordre. / A Navier-Stokes solver for incompressible flow has been developed using a mixed spectral/finite-difference approach, while being compatible with a massively parallel environment. We use it to perform direct numerical simulations in a situation where the turbulent agitation is synthesized under the action of a random forcing. The turbulence production is confined in a central layer and self-diffuses towards a free-slip or no-slip surface. With this set-up, we obtain a statistical steady state in which the mean shear, usually associated with the turbulence production, is zero. These conditions allow a better understanding of the intercomponent energy transfer, induced by the slow part of the pressure-strain correlation in the Reynolds tensor budget. We focus on this transfer when it occurs in combination with the blocking effect, in the vicinity of the surface. The results will help to model the pressure-strain correlation in a second- order-closure context.

The focus of the present licentiate thesis is on the effect of suction and pressure gradients on turbulent boundary-layer flows, which are investigated separately through performing numerical simulations.The first part aims at assessing history and development effects on adverse pressure-gradient (APG) turbulent boundary layers (TBL). A suitable set-up was developed to study near-equilibrium conditions for a boundary layer developingon a flat plate by setting the free-stream velocity at the top of the domain following a power law. The computational box size and the correct definition of the top-boundary condition were systematically tested. Well-resolved large-eddy simulations were performed to keep computational costs low. By varying the free-stream velocity distribution parameters, e.g. power-law exponent and virtual origin, pressure gradients of different strength and development were obtained. The magnitude of the pressure gradient is quantified in terms of the Clauser pressure-gradient parameter β. The effect of the APG is closely related to its streamwise development, hence, TBLs with non-constant and constant β were investigated. The effect was manifested in the mean flow through a much more pronounced wake region and in the Reynolds stresses through the existence of an outer peak. The terms of the turbulent kinetic energy budgets indicate the influence of the APG on the distribution of the transfer mechanism across the boundary layer. Stronger and more energetic structures were identified in boundary layers with relatively stronger pressure gradients in their development history. Due to the difficulty of determining the boundary-layer thickness in flows with strong pressure gradients or over a curvedsurface, a new method based on the diagnostic-plot concept was introduced to obtain a robust estimation of the edge of a turbulent boundary layer. In the second part, large-eddy simulations were performed on temporally developing turbulent asymptotic suction boundary layers (TASBLs). Findings from previous studies about the effect of suction could be confirmed, e.g. the reduction of the fluctuation levels and Reynolds shear stresses. Furthermore, the importance of the size of the computational domain and the time development were investigated. Both parameters were found to have a large impact on the results even on low-order statistics. While the mean velocity profile collapses in the inner layer irrespective of box size and development time, a wake region occurs for too small box sizes or early development time and vanishes once sufficiently large domains and/or integration times are chosen. The asymptotic state is charactersized by surprisingly thick boundary layers even for moderateReynolds numbers Re (based on free-stream velocity and laminar displacement thickness); for instance, Re = 333 gives rise to a friction Reynolds number Reτ = 2000. Similarly, the flow gives rise to very large structures in the outer region. These findings have important ramifications for experiments, since very large facilities are required to reach the asymptotic state even for low Reynolds numbers. / <p>QC 20160418</p>

The focus of this thesis is on the numerical study of subcritical transition to turbulence in the asymptotic suction boundary layer (ASBL). Applying constant homogeneous suction prevents the spatial growth of the boundary layer, granting access to the asymptotic dynamics. This enables research approaches which are not feasible in the spatially growing case. In a first part, the laminar–turbulent separatrix of the ASBL is investigated numerically by means of an edge-tracking algorithm. The consideration of spanwise-extended domains allows for the robust localisation of the attracting flow structures on this separatrix. The active part of the identified edge states consists of a pair of low- and high-speed streaks, which experience calm phases followed by high energy bursts. During these bursts the structure is destroyed and re-created with a shift in the spanwise direction. Depending on the streamwise extent of the domain, these shifts are either regular in direction and distance, and periodic in time, or irregular in space and erratic in time. In all cases, the same clear regeneration mechanism of streaks and vor- tices is identified, bearing strong similarities with the classical self-sustaining cycle in near-wall turbulence. Bifurcations from periodic to chaotic regimes are studied by varying the streamwise length of the (periodic) domain. The resulting bifurcation diagram contains a number of phenomena, e.g. multistability, intermittency and period doubling, usually investigated in the context of low-dimensional systems. The second part is concerned with spatio–temporal aspects of turbulent ASBL in large domains near the onset of sustained turbulence. Adiabatically decreasing the Reynolds number, starting from a fully turbulent state, we study low-Re turbulence and events leading to laminarisation. Furthermore, a robust quantitative estimate for the lowest Reynolds number at which turbulence is sustained is obtained at Re <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?%5Capprox" /> 270. / <p>QC 20140213</p>

Wall-bounded turbulent flows such as plane Couette flow, channel, pipe flows and boundary layer flows are fundamental problem of interest that we often meet in many scientific and engineering situations. The goal of the present thesis is to investigate the origin of large-scale streaky motions observed in the wall-bounded turbulent flows. Under a hypothesis that the large-scale streaky motions sustain with a process similar to the well-known near-wall self-sustaining cycle, the present thesis have pursued on four separate subjects: (i) non-modal amplification of streaks, (ii) the secondary instability of the finite amplitude streaks, (iii) existence of a self-sustaining process at large scale and (iv) turbulent skin friction reduction by forcing streaks. First, using a linear model with turbulent mean flow and the related eddy viscosity, it is shown that the streaks are largely amplified by harmonic and stochastic forcing. The largely amplified streaks undergo the secondary instability and it has been associated with the formation of the large-scale motions (bulge). The existence of a self-sustaining process involving the amplification and instability of streaks at large scale is proved by quenching the smaller-scale energy carrying eddies in the near-wall and logarithmic regions. Finally, it is shown that artificially forcing of large-scale streaks reduce the turbulent skin friction up to 10\% by attenuating the near-wall streamwise vortices.

La perspective lagrangienne, décrivant un écoulement selon les trajectoires de traceurs fluides, est une approche naturelle pour étudier les phénomènes de dispersion dans les écoulements turbulents. En turbulence de paroi, le mouvement des traceurs est influencé par le cisaillement moyen et par une forte inhomogénéité et anisotropie en proche paroi. On étudie les propriétés lagrangiennes d’un écoulement de canal turbulent par simulation numérique directe à un nombre de Reynolds modéré. Les statistiques d’accélération lagrangienne sont comparées aux expériences de suivi de particules réalisées en parallèle à ce travail. Comme en turbulence homogène isotrope (THI), les composantes d’accélération le long des trajectoires lagrangiennes se décorrèlent sur des temps comparables aux plus petites échelles de l’écoulement, tandis que la norme de l’accélération reste corrélée plus longtemps. La persistance d’anisotropie à petite échelle loin de la paroi est constatée par l’existence d’une corrélation croisée non nulle entredeux composantes de l’accélération. On montre que, en conséquence des flux moyens d’énergie cinétique en turbulence de paroi, près des parois les traceurs se déplacent et s’étalent sur des plus grandes distances quand ils sont suivis en arrière dans le temps qu’en avant. La dispersion relative de paires de traceurs est aussi étudiée. Aux temps courts, la séparation des paires est balistique pour toutes les distances à la paroi. Comme en THI, les traceurs se séparent plus rapidement lorsqu’ils sont suivis en arrière dans le temps. Aux temps plus longs, le cisaillement moyen accélère la séparation dans la direction de l’écoulement moyen. Un modèle de cascade balistique initialement proposé pour la THI est adapté aux écoulements inhomogènes / The Lagrangian perspective, describing a flow from the trajectories of fluid tracers, isa natural framework for studying dispersion phenomena in turbulent flows. In wall-boundedturbulence, the motion of fluid tracers is affected by mean shear and by strong inhomogeneityand anisotropy near walls. We investigate the Lagrangian properties of a turbulent channel flowusing direct numerical simulations at a moderate Reynolds number. Lagrangian accelerationstatistics are compared to particle tracking experiments performed in parallel to this work. Asin homogeneous isotropic turbulence (HIT), the acceleration components along Lagrangianpaths decorrelate over time scales representative of the smallest scales of the flow, while theacceleration norm stays correlated for much longer. The persistence of small-scale anisotropy farfrom the wall is demonstrated in the form of a non-zero cross-correlation between accelerationcomponents. As a result of the average fluxes of kinetic energy in wall turbulence, tracers initiallylocated close to the wall travel and spread over longer distances when tracked backwardsin time than forwards. The relative dispersion of tracer pairs is finally investigated. At shorttimes, pair separation is ballistic for all wall distances. As in HIT, relative dispersion is timeasymmetric, with tracers separating faster when tracked backwards in time. At longer times,mean shear dominates leading to rapid separation in the mean flow direction. A ballisticcascade model previously proposed for HIT is adapted to inhomogeneous flows

This thesis presents a detailed, two-dimensional analysis of the performance of multi-element guard-heated hot-film wall shear stress microsensors for turbulent flows. Previous studies of conventional, single-element sensors show that a significant portion of heat generated in the hot-film travels through the substrate before reaching the fluid, causing spectral and phase errors in the wall shear stress signal and drastically reducing the spatial resolution of the sensor. Earlier attempts to reduce these errors have focused on reducing the effective thermal conductivity of the substrate. New guard-heated microsensor designs proposed to overcome the severe deficiencies of the conventional design are investigated in this thesis. Guard-heaters remove the errors associated with substrate heat conduction, by forcing zero temperature gradient at the edges and bottom face of the hot-film, and hence, block the indirect heat transfer to the flow. Air and water flow over the sensors are studied numerically to investigate design, performance and signal strength of the guard-heated sensors. Our results show, particularly for measurements in low-conductivity fluids such as air, that edge guard-heating needs to be supplemented by a sub-surface guard-heater, to make substrate conduction errors negligible. With this two-plane guard-heating, a strong non-linearity in the standard single-element designs can be corrected, and spectral and phase errors arising from substrate conduction can be eliminated. / Graduate / 0548 / etrati@uvic.ca