Relaxation of Spatially Advancing Coherent Structures in a Turbulent Curved Channel Flow

A direct numerical simulation is made for the incompressible turbulent flow in the 180 deg curved channel with a long straight portion connected to its exit port. An examination is made for how the organized coherent vortex grows and decays in the curved channel: the radius ratio of 0.92, the aspect ratio of 7.2, and the succeeding straight section length of 75 times the channel half width. The 1552 × 91 × 128 ( = 18,427,136) grids are allocated to the computational domain. The frictional-velocity-based Reynolds number is kept at 150 to resolve the long domain including curved and straight regions. In contrast to that the coherent vortex grows along the concave wall, the vortex remains strong in the convex-wall side after the curvature accompanying a tail of the small-scale turbulence near the convex wall. The dissimilarity between the onset and disappearing of the coherent vortex essentially comes from the mean pressure gradient, which aids or averts the near-wall fluid oppositely between the curvature inlet and the exit. The mean flow is decelerated near the inlet of the convex wall to destabilize the flow and to trigger the onset of the coherent vortex. Contrary, the mean flow is accelerated near the exit of the convex wall to weaken the coherent vortex, and is decelerated near the exit of the concave wall to enhance the turbulence. Therefore, the turbulence enhancement and attenuation occurs oppositely between the inlet and exit of the curvature, and the coherent vortex draws a wake in the convex-side rather than the concave-side where it starts.