Drag reduction in the turbulent Kolmogorov flow
- Others:
- Dipartimento di Fisica Generale [Torino] ; Università degli studi di Torino = University of Turin (UNITO)
- Institut Non Linéaire de Nice Sophia-Antipolis (INLN) ; Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS) ; COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) (COMUE UCA)-COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) (COMUE UCA)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- Dipartimento di Fisica ; Università degli studi di Genova = University of Genoa (UniGe)
Description
We investigate the phenomenon of drag reduction in a viscoelastic fluid model of dilute polymer solutions. By means of direct numerical simulations of the three-dimensional turbulent Kolmogorov flow we show that drag reduction takes place above a critical Reynolds number Rec. An explicit expression for the dependence of Rec on polymer elasticity and diffusivity is derived. The values of the drag coefficient obtained for different fluid parameters collapse onto a universal curve when plotted as a function of the rescaled Reynolds number Re/Rec. The analysis of the momentum budget allows us to gain some insight on the physics of drag reduction, and suggests the existence of a Re-independent value of the drag cofficient—lower than the Newtonian one—for large Reynolds numbers.
Additional details
- URL
- https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00016493
- URN
- urn:oai:HAL:hal-00016493v1
- Origin repository
- UNICA