Experimental investigations on frictional resistance and velocity distribution of rough wall with regularly distributed triangular ribs

• Flow over the regularly distributed triangular ribs was investigated.
• Simultaneous measurement of flow resistance and velocity profile was performed.
• Flow resistance was measured directly and velocity profile was measured by LDV.
• Flow resistance was estimated by the information of the velocity field.
• Estimated flow resistance has good agreement with the measured flow resistance.

The relationship between the flow resistance of a turbulent flow over triangular ribs regularly distributed on a wall surface and the velocity distribution around the ribs was investigated experimentally. A concentric cylinder device composed of an inner test cylinder and an outer cylinder was employed to measure the flow resistance using the torque of the shaft of the inner cylinder and the velocity distribution of the flow around a rib by laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) simultaneously. We prepared four inner test cylinders having 4, 8, 12 and 16 triangular ribs on the surface with the same interval between them. Each rib had an isosceles right triangle V-shape and a height of 2 mm. To investigate the relationship between flow resistance and velocity distribution, we estimated the frictional drag and pressure drag acting on the surface of the ribs separately using the velocity distribution. Therefore, we could also estimate the total flow resistance using the velocity distribution. As a result of the experiment, the flow resistance and the attachment point downstream of the rib were shown to depend on the distance between ribs. Moreover, the flow resistance estimated using the velocity distribution had good agreement with the flow resistance measured using the torque of the inner cylinder.