Skin-friction field in turbulent convection etc15 Tracking Number 52Presentation: Session: Vortex Dynamics 1 Room: Room A Session start: 10:30 Tue 25 Aug 2015 Anastasiya Kolchynska anastasiya.kolchynska@tu-ilmenau.de Affifliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany Vinodh Bandaru vinodh-kumar.bandaru@tu-ilmenau.de Affifliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany Janet Scheel jscheel@oxy.edu Affifliation: Department of Physics, Occidental College Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA Jörg Schumacher joerg.schumacher@tu-ilmenau.de Affifliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany Topics: - Vortex dynamics and structure formation, - Wall bounded flows Abstract: The dynamics of the boundary layers of temperature and velocity are the key to deeper understanding of turbulent transport of heat and momentum in thermal convection. Here, the structure of the skin friction field at the bottom and top plates of a Rayleigh-B\'{e}nard convection setup is investigated. We therefore analyze data obtained in direct numerical simulations of Rayleigh-B\'{e}nard convection in a cylindrical cell of aspect ratio $\Gamma = 1$. Our analysis is focused to critical points of the two-dimensional skin friction field at the walls. We analyze the statistics of the critical points and relate them to the thermal plumes which detach from the wall and move up into bulk. |