Characterization of a self-similar turbulent boundary layer near separation measured using high-spatial-resolution two-component – two-dimensional particle image velocimetry

This paper report on the design of an experiment to establish an experimental self-similar adverse pressure gradient (APG) turbulent boundary layer (TBL) flow at the verge of separation in order to characterise its statistical structure and the contribution of the Reynolds stresses to the wall shear stress via quadrant analysis decomposition in conjunction with the Renard & Deck (RD) decomposition of the mean skin friction. In this study high-spatial-resolution (HSR) two-component - two-dimensional (2C-2D) particle image velocimetry (PIV) is employed to measure the self-similar APG-TBL flow. The measurements of the self-similar APG-TBL at the verge of separation, which is referred to as 'strong APG-TBL' is compared with similar HSR 2C-2D PIV measurements of a TBL under zero and mild APG to characterise the effect of the APG on the TBL. In the strong APG-TBL, the outer scaled profiles of the first- and second-order statistics, as well as the defect velocity exhibit self-similarity over the measured streamwise domain of 3.3δ. The quadrant decomposition of the velocity fluctuations shows that the formation of the outer peak in the Reynolds shear stress profile under APG is due to the energisation of sweep motions of high-momentum fluid in the outer region of the boundary layer. The RD decomposition of the mean skin friction shows that the skin friction has larger contributions from ejections than sweeps. This is due to the emergence of the outer peaks with a correspondingly diminishing of the inner peaks in the turbulence production profiles. The skewness and flatness profiles show that the zero skewness and minimum flatness locations of the streamwise and wall-normal velocity fluctuations collapse with the location of the maximum Reynolds streamwise stress in the TBLs irrespective of the pressure gradient imposed on the TBL.