Direct numerical simulations of turbulent pipe flow at high Reynolds number

This paper is associated with a video winner of a 2021 American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) Gallery of Fluid Motion Award for work presented at the DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion. The original video is available online at the Gallery of Fluid Motion, https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2021.GFM.V0053.

Figure 1

Pipe geometry: (a) coordinate system and typical length scales and (b) location of reference shells used in the flow visualizations.

Figure 2

DNS of pipe flow at ${\text{Re}}_{\tau }=6000$: instantaneous axial velocity field (a) in a cross-stream plane and (b) at $y^{+}\approx 15$. The color scale ranges from 0 (blue) to $1.3u_b$ (red) and the white isoline in (a) marks the isolevel $u_z/u_b=0.9$.

Figure 3

DNS of pipe flow at ${\text{Re}}_{\tau }=6000$: instantaneous axial velocity field $u_z/u_b$, in unrolled cylindrical shells, at (a) $y^{+}=15$ and (b) $y/R=0.3$. The color scale ranges from 0 (blue) to $1.3u_b$ (red).

Figure 4

Comparison of axial velocity fields for DNS at ${\text{Re}}_{\tau }=180$ and 6000: (a) near-wall shell (left) and $y/R=0.3$ shell (right) and (b) cross-stream plane.