AE 6345

Turbulence
Homework 1
September 10, 2015
Due: September 17, 2015 in class
Let us examine certain well-established equations in fluid/gasdynamics but by allowing for disturbances and
which can be tractable as homework exercises.

1. Low-speed wind tunnels have a bellmouth to accelerate the flow. This accelerate serves to dampen out
turbulence and to improve the flow quality. Lets analyze this. Consider the Bernoulli equation which is used
for incompressible flows
1
= + 2
2
Let us apply Reynolds averaging with the usual assumption of stationarity, namely that a generic property
() = + ()

Suppose we now simplify the problem further by claiming that

as is commonly done.

() =

a. Express in terms of the standard deviations of the other properties, noting that the flow is
incompressible. It is preferable to normalize your result by the mean dynamic pressure
i.e.,

where you have to fill in that .

1
= 2
2

1
=

b. Consider a zero pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer. Surface pressure data from Speaker and
Ailman (NASA CR 486, 1966) * at Mach 0.42 shows that 8 103 . Assuming that the static
pressure at the lower portion of the boundary layer shows similar fluctuations and assuming that
fluctuations of total pressure are negligible, obtain a numerical value for .
c. Comment on whether the pitot probe can be used for obtaining the mean velocity profile in an
incompressible turbulent boundary layer.
d. Consider now that a turbulent flow with an incoming velocity of 50 m/s encounters an adverse pressure
gradient so that the pressure drops from 100 kPa to 90 kPa over 1 m. Assume a constant density of 1.2
kg/m3. What is the velocity at the exit? If it is given that the incoming velocity fluctuations have a
standard deviation of 1% of the mean incoming velocity, estimate the standard deviation of the velocity
fluctuations at the exit as a percentage of the mean exit velocity.

Available upon request or you can do an online search.

How is this justifiable?

2. Consider velocity fluctuations across a shock wave. At high speeds, disturbances are associated with pressure,
temperature and velocity, these being known as acoustic, entropy and vortical disturbances. The pressure ratio
across a shock wave can be written as
12
2
2
=1+
1
1
1
1

Ignore for simplicity entropic disturbances. Using the same Reynolds averaging procedure as before, derive a
(messy) expression for the vortical disturbances downstream of the shock wave in terms of the pressure
disturbances both upstream and downstream and the vortical disturbances upstream. You can either use primes
to indicate disturbances or use the standard deviation for notational purposes. Note that this equation cannot be
solved for the downstream vortical disturbances 2 (or 2 ) without further assumptions. One that is typically
used is known as the strong Reynolds analogy (good luck).

3. In like manner, consider the Mach number of a perfect gas

For analysis, this can be rewritten as

2 =

Morkovins hypothesis states that the turbulence field of a compressible flow can be treated to behave like that of
an incompressible flow as long as the turbulent Mach number 0.3. Perform a Reynolds averaging procedure
to the Mach number definition and for values of
2 of 0.01 and 0.10 comment on the validity of the
hypothesis. For simplicity, assume that the temperature fluctuations are negligible.

Bonus: What if the temperature fluctuations are not negligible? Temperature spottiness is especially notorious in
heated wind tunnels, e.g., NASA Langleys 8 Foot High Temperature Tunnel and the NASA Glenns Hypersonic
Tunnel Facility.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/windtunnels.html
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/Facilities/ext/htf/index.html