Comparison of Turbulence Scales between Internal and External Flow at High Reynolds Number

Data from wall-bounded turbulent flow measured at high Reynolds number was examined to investigate the difference in scaling parameters between internal pipe flow and external turbulent boundary layers. Of particular interest was the degree of agreement between the internal and external flow scaling behavior once the external intermittency of the external flow was accounted for. Results demonstrated that once the external intermittency was accounted for specific parameters describing large-scale characteristics follow similar outer-scaled behavior throughout the flow field for both inner and outer flows. Similarly, scaling parameters for representing dissipative turbulent structure followed similar behavior in inner scaling throughout the flow field for both inner and outer flows. These characteristics were used to produce model one-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic spectra that, when compared to the measured one-dimensional energy spectra, isolated of the difference between the two types of flows in spectral space.