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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 98 » Issue 8
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 084501 (2007) [4 pages]

Bubbly Turbulent Drag Reduction Is a Boundary Layer Effect

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Thomas H. van den Berg1, Dennis P. M. van Gils1, Daniel P. Lathrop2, and Detlef Lohse1,*
1Department of Applied Physics, IMPACT, and J. M. Burgers Center for Fluid Dynamics, Physics of Fluids Group, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, Netherlands
2Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

Received 2 October 2006; published 21 February 2007

In turbulent Taylor-Couette flow, the injection of bubbles reduces the overall drag. On the other hand, rough walls enhance the overall drag. In this work, we inject bubbles into turbulent Taylor-Couette flow with rough walls (with a Reynolds number up to 4×105), finding an enhancement of the dimensionless drag as compared to the case without bubbles. The dimensional drag is unchanged. As in the rough-wall case no smooth boundary layers can develop, the results demonstrate that bubbly drag reduction is a pure boundary layer effect.

© 2007 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.084501
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.084501
PACS:
47.27.−i

*Electronic address: d.lohse@utwente.nl

 
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