Turbulent decay in the near field of multi-scale and conventional grids

Wind tunnel turbulence generated by a conventional and two multi-scale grids has been investigate. The grids were all designed to produce turbulence with the same integral scale, so that a direct comparison could be made between the flows, both in physical and scaled space. It has been suggested in the literature (e.g. Hurst and Vassilicos, 2007) that for a particular class of multi fractal grids, the turbulence decay depends exponentially on the distance from the grid. After a short distance where the flow is highly dependent of the geometry, it was found that the exponential decay is not unique to a particular geometry, but may be found over the same streamwise distances also behind the multi-scale grids, as well as for the conventional grid.By comparing the probability density functions measured using laser Doppler and hot wire anemometry it is shown that hot wire measurements may contain severe errors if taken too close to the grid. It is shown that negative streamwise velocity components may occasionally be found as far as 10 times the mesh widths downstream of the grid. Since hot wire anemometry is not able to measure the sign of the velocity vector, this leads to a folding of the data which artificially increases the derived mean velocity and, more seriously, reduces the width of the probability distribution. Hence the interpreted turbulent stress is reduced.

► The decay of turbulence behind a conventional grid and two mulit-scale grids is studied experimentally.
► Large scale facility having a test section of about 2 × 3 × 12 m, gave very good spatial resolution.
► Covers the near field decay of turbulence from x = 0.5M to x = 75M, where M is the mesh size.
► The grids were designed to produce the same integral lengths to make direct comparisons possible.
► After initial development where jets and wakes interact, the grids produce the same turbulent energy levels and decay rates.