Active and inactive contributions to the wall pressure and wall-shear stress in turbulent boundary layers

A phenomenological description is presented to explain the low-frequency/large-scale contributions to the wall-shear-stress (τw) and wall-pressure (pw) spectra of canonical turbulent boundary layers, which are well known to increase with Reynolds number. The explanation is based on the concept of active and inactive motions (Townsend, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 11, 1961) associated with the attached-eddy hypothesis. Unique data sets of simultaneously acquired τw, pw and velocity fluctuation time series in the log region are considered, across friction-Reynolds-number (Reτ) range of O(10³) Reτ O(10⁶). A recently proposed energy-decomposition methodology (Deshpande et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 914, 2021) is implemented to reveal the active and inactive contributions to the τw- and pw-spectra. Empirical evidence is provided in support of Bradshaw's (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 30, 1967) hypothesis that the inactive motions are responsible for the non-local wall-ward transport of the large-scale inertia-dominated energy, which is produced in the log region by active motions. This explains the large-scale signatures in the τw-spectrum that are noted, despite negligible large-scale turbulence production near the wall. For wall pressure, active and inactive motions contribute to the pw-spectra at intermediate and large scales, respectively. Their contributions are found to increase with increasing Reτ due to the broadening and energization of the wall-scaled (attached) eddy hierarchy.