Turbulent plane wall jets over smooth and rough surfaces

Large-eddy simulations were carried out to study the effects of surface roughness on a plane wall-jet using the Lagrangian dynamic eddy-viscosity subgrid-scale model, at Re = 7500 (based on the jet bulk velocity and height). Results over both smooth and rough surfaces were validated by experimental data at the same Reynolds number. As the jet is injected into the still environment, large-scale rollers are generated in the shear layer between the high-momentum fluid of the jet and the surrounding and are convected downstream with the flow. To understand the extent to which the outer-layer structures modify the flow in the inner layer and the extent to which the effect of roughness spreads away from the wall, both instantaneous and mean flow fields were investigated. The results revealed that, for the Reynolds number and roughness height considered in this study, the effect of roughness is mostly confined to the near-wall region of the wall jet. There is no structural difference between the outer layer of the wall jet over the smooth and rough surfaces. Roughness does not affect the size of the outer-layer structures or the scaling of the profiles of Reynolds stresses in the outer layer. However, in the inner layer, roughness redistributes stresses from streamwise to wall-normal and spanwise directions toward isotropy. Contours of joint probability-density function of the streamwise and wall-normal velocity fluctuations at the bottom of the logarithmic region match those of the turbulent boundary layer at the same height; while the traces of the outer-layer structure were detected at the top of the logarithmic region, indicating that they do not affect the flow very close to the wall, but still modify a major portion of the inner layer. This modification must be taken into consideration when the inner layer of a wall jet is compared with the conventional turbulent boundary layer.