Direct numerical simulation of compressible turbulent channel flows using the discontinuous Galerkin method

Abstract Direct numerical simulation of turbulent channel flows between isothermal walls have been carried out using discontinuous Galerkin method. Three Mach numbers are considered (0.2, 0.7, and 1.5) at a fixed Reynolds number ≈2800, based on the bulk velocity, bulk density, half channel width, and dynamic viscosity at the wall. Power law and log-law with the scaling of the mean streamwise velocity are considered to study their performance on compressible flows and their dependence on Mach numbers. It indicates that power law seems slightly better and less dependent on Mach number than the log-law in the overlap region. Mach number effects on the second-order (velocity, pressure, density, temperature, shear stress, and vorticity fluctuations) and higher-order (skewness and flatness of velocity, pressure, density, and temperature fluctuations) statistics are explored and discussed. Both inner (that is wall variables) and outer (that is global) scalings (with Mach number) are considered. It is found that for some second-order statistics (i.e. velocity, density, and temperature), the outer scaling collapses better than the inner scaling. It is also found that near-wall large-scale motions are affected by Mach number. The near-wall spanwise streak spacing increases with increasing Mach number. Iso-surfaces of the second invariant of the velocity gradient tensor are more sparsely distributed and elongated as Mach number increases, which is similar to the distribution of near-wall low speed streaks.