Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229

Experimental study on the turbulent boundary layer

ow over riblets surface
Jin-jun Wang

, Shi-long Lan, Guang Chen

Institute of Fluid Mechanics, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing 100083,
Peoples Republic of China
Received 4 August 1999; received in revised form 9 February 2000; accepted 27 March 2000
Abstract
The laser Doppler velocimeter (LDV) and hydrogen bubble ow visualization techniques have been used to measure
the characteristics of turbulent boundary layer ow over riblets surface and to observe its coherent structure in the near
wall region. The experimental results indicate that, in comparison with the turbulent boundary layer ow over a smooth
surface, greater values are obtained for the thickness of viscous sublayer, the thickness of buer region and the integral
constant C in the log-law. Moreover, the maximum value of turbulent intensity u

}U

is increased by 6.7%, but its

position is decreased by 6.4%, the skewness factor and the atness factor are hardly aected by the riblets surface.
The non-dimensional value of low-speed streak spacing is reduced by 20%, this is also an indication of turbulent drag
reduction. c 2000 The Japan Society of Fluid Mechanics and Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Turbulent boundary layer ow; Riblets surface; LDV measurement; Flow visualization; Low-speed streak
structures
1. Introduction
It has always been the aim of human beings to save the energy sources, and one of the main ways
is to reduce the surface friction in the design of the transportation tools. The surface friction has
a large portion in the total resistance of the transportation tools, for example, this portion is about
50% for ordinary civil airplane and ships, 70% for submarine and nearly 100% for long-distance
pipe transportation. In the most surface region of the transportation tool mentioned above, the ow
is in turbulent state, so that the study on turbulent drag reduction is of great importance, and great
attention has been attracted.
The study on drag reduction was started in the 1930s, and the main work was to decrease the
surface roughness before the 1960s; this implies that the smoother the surface is, the less the friction

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jjwang@public.fhnet.cn.net (J. Wang).
0169-5983/00/$20.00 c 2000 The Japan Society of Fluid Mechanics and Elsevier Science B.V.
All rights reserved.
PII: S0 1 6 9 - 5 9 8 3 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 0 9 - 5
218 J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229
Fig. 1. Cross-section of the riblet plate.
will be. In the 1970s, the forbiddance of Arabian oil led to the increase of oil price, which again
caused the study on turbulent drag reduction. NASA Langley center is the pioneer of this research
period, it was found that the micro-grooves along the streamwise direction may eciently reduce
the surface friction. In order to design the drag reduction surface eciently, researchers have been
working on the characteristics of turbulent boundary layer ow over riblets surface and its drag
reduction mechanism.
In the experimental investigations of turbulent boundary layer ow, Hefner et al. (1983), Walsh
(1982, 1983) and Walsh and Lindemann (1984) obtained that the optimum design of the drag
reduction surface is a symmetrical V-shaped riblets surface with its non-dimensional width and
height of 15, and the maximum value of the drag reduction is 8%. Coustols (1989) summarized
the eect of riblets width, height and the yaw angle on drag reduction, and he obtained that the
drag reduction is 78% for airfoil and revolution body models. In another experiment of revolution
body, a drag reduction of 9% was obtained by Neumann and Dinkelacker (1991). Gaudets (1989)
experiment showed a drag reduction of 7% for turbulent boundary layer ow at Ma = 1.2. Owing
to the complexity of the turbulence, we have known very little about the mechanism of the drag
reduction with riblets surface, and the design of the riblets surface has not reached the theoretical
level. Moreover, it is still an unanswered question whether the drag reduction of 89% is the
limitation.
2. Experimental apparatus and instrumentation
The experiment was conducted in a steel-walled glass open channel at Hydraulics Laboratory,
Tsinghua University. The work section of the open channel is 18 cm wide, 22.5 cm high and
300 cm long. The chamber was settled in the upward of the channel, and water ow through the
grid and screens entered the work section to stabilize the ow and reduce the turbulent intensity.
The experimental model is a Plexiglas at plate 240 cm long, 18 cm wide and 1 cm thick. One
of the plate surfaces is used as smooth plate, and another surface is machined as spaced-V-type
riblets surface with spacing s, height h and platform width w (Fig. 1). In this experiment, we have
h = w = 1.0 mm and s = 2.0 mm. The riblets plate is xed between two smooth plates at the same
level, and its length is 20 and 50 cm, respectively (Fig. 2).
The one-dimensional LDV has been used to measure the boundary layer ow, which is made by
Hydraulics Laboratory, Tsinghua University. This system has a high resolution and can give out the
velocity distribution of the viscous sublayer (Dong and Ding, 1989; Dong et al., 1982). The x-axis
is along the streamwise direction, the ,-axis points upward, the :-axis is in the direction of the Laser
beam and the origin of the coordinates is located at the front center of the riblets surface. The LDV
was located on a three-dimensional transverse with precision of 0.1, 0.01 and 0.1 mm for the x, ,
J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229 219
Fig. 2. The experimental model (unit: mm).
Fig. 3. The distribution of velocity (L =50 cm).
and : directions, respectively. The transverse can move by hand in all the three directions and by
motor in the ,-direction.
In this experiment, the in-coming ow velocity is U
0
= 17.5 cm}s, the water height is 5 cm, and
the turbulent intensity is 4%. A cylindrical rod of [7 was xed at x = 58 cm to advance the
boundary layer transition. The measurement was carried out along the centerline of the plate.
3. Experimental result and analysis
3.1. Velocity distribution
3.1.1. Viscous sublayer
The velocity is linearly distributed in the viscous sublayer, so that the friction velocity U

can
be deduced from the velocity distribution. The actual thickness of the viscous sublayer o
+
v
is the
distance between the coordinates origin and the intersection point of the viscous sublayer and
the buer region. In this experiment, there are only a few experimental data in the buer region,
and the velocity distribution cannot be described precisely in this region. We take the uppermost
position where velocity distribution obeys U
+
= ,
+
as the actual thickness of viscous sublayer o
+
v
(Fig. 3, Tables 1 and 2).
220 J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229
Table 1
The thickness of viscous sublayer (L = 20 cm)
x (cm) 20 5 10 25 40 60 80 100
o
+
v
10.0 10.5 11.0 11.0 9.5 10.0 9.0 8.0
Table 2
The thickness of viscous sublayer (L = 50 cm)
x (cm) 20 5 5 15 25 35 45 55 70 85 100
o
+
v
9.5 9.5 10.5 12.0 11.0 10.5 11.0 10.0 10.0 10.5 10.5
Table 3
The thickness of the buer region (L = 20 cm)
x (cm) 20 5 10 25 40 60 80 100
,
+
3.0 3.5 7.0 5.0 4.0 6.0 4.0 3.0
In the above two tables, the italicised data are measured in the riblets surface region, and the
others present the smooth plate results. It is seen that, in comparison with the smooth plate results,
the thickness of the viscous sublayer o
+
v
increases about 10% for riblets surface. Bechert and Hoppe
(1985) suggested that the riblets surface caused a distance between the streamwise vortex and the
wall in the sublayer, and part of the uid ow worked as lubricator in the bottom of the riblets
surface, which is equivalent to the increase of the sublayer thickness; thus, the friction is deduced.
Choi (1989) also obtained that the riblets surface caused the sublayer increase. We think that the
increase of viscous sublayer thickness causes the buer region and the log-law region to move
upward, so that the ow velocity in the same position is increased in comparison with the smooth
plate case, which is the result of drag reduction. We may conclude that the riblets surface used in
our experiment has drag reduction characteristics.
3.1.2. Buer region
Although there are fewer measurement points in the buer region, it is still seen from Fig. 3
that the velocity distribution can be described in a log-law form. Owing to the lack of experimental
data, we do not analyze it in detail. For ow over smooth plate, Dong and Ding (1990) obtained
U
+
= 12.8 log ,
+
3.42 in the buer region.
The extent of the buer layer ,
+
is the distance from the high limitation of the viscous sublayer
to the low limitation of the log-law region. In this experiment, ,
+
=3 9.5 is obtained. Because
the thickness of the buer region is thinner itself, there exists larger discrepancy in calculating this
thickness. Then, it is still seen from Tables 3 and 4 that the thickness of the buer region is greater
for the present two riblets plates than that for the smooth plate located up and down the riblets
surface plate. This increase is 72% and 17% for L = 20 cm and L = 50 cm, respectively.
J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229 221
Table 4
The thickness of the buer region (L = 50 cm)
x (cm) 20 5 5 15 25 35 45 55 70 85 100
,
+
8.5 8.5 7.5 8.0 9.0 9.5 7.5 7.5 4.0 7.5 6.5
Table 5
The values of constant A and C
L = 20 cm L = 20 cm L = 50 cm L = 50 cm
Smooth plate Riblets plate Smooth plate Riblets plate
A 5.74 5.84 5.68 5.79
C 5.36 5.77 5.25 5.75
Table 6
The maximum value of u

}U

(L = 20 cm)
x (cm) 20 5 10 25 40 60 80 100
(u

}U

)
max
2.27 2.36 2.33 2.74 1.97 2.33 2.36 2.24
,
+
18.7 9.5 12.2 9.3 17.2 17.2 8.6 7.9
3.1.3. Log-law region
In this paper, the limitation of the log-law region is determined with the iterative method, until
the correlation coecient reaches the maximum. The correlation coecient r is greater than 0.95
throughout the experiment, which implies that the velocity distribution obeys the log-law in this
region, i.e. U
+
= Alog ,
+
+ C. The average values of the constants A and C are shown in Table
5 for smooth and riblet plates. The constant C for a riblets plate is greater than that for a smooth
plate, this is the reason why a riblets plate possesses a smaller friction velocity, U

. The smaller
value of U

indicates that the surface drag is reduced, which leads to a bigger value of C in the
log-law. It can be seen obviously from Fig. 3 that, for riblets surface plate, the velocity value is
greater than that for smooth plate, this is consistent with the results of Choi (1989) and Tang and
Clark (1993).
3.2. The distribution of turbulent intensities, u

}U

The turbulent intensity distributions are shown in Fig. 4, and their maximum values are listed in
Tables 6 and 7. It can be seen that, for the short riblets plate, the maximum value of u

}U

and its
position do not change obviously; and for the long riblets plate, the average of the maximum value
(u

}U

)
max
is 2.54, this value is 6.7% greater than that for smooth plate, but its position is 6.4%
lower than the smooth plate result. Tang and Clark (1993) obtained that, for riblets plate, (u

}U

)
max
decreases 7% in comparison with the smooth plate result, and its position changes from smooth plate
value ,
+
=15 to ,
+
=25. The discrepancies between the two experimental results may be attributed
to the relative measuring positions.
222 J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229
Fig. 4. The distribution of turbulent intensities.
Table 7
The maximum value of u

}U

(L = 50 cm)
x (cm) 20 5 5 15 25 35 45 55 70 85 100
(u

}U

)
max
2.25 2.2 2.42 2.7 2.53 2.53 2.52 2.46 2.11 2.45 2.78
,
+
12.7 8.6 10.5 16.0 9.9 12.3 10.9 21.0 12.5 10.7 10.9
3.3. High-order moment
In turbulent ow eld, the probability distribution of the streamwise uctuating velocity u is
non-Gaussian, thus it is necessary to study the high-order moment of u so that we can further
J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229 223
understand the turbulent ow. The third-order moment, i.e. the skewness factor, is dened as
S
u
= u
3
}(u
2
)
3}2
=
_
+

u
3
(u) du
_
_ _
+

u
2
(u) du
_
3}2
.
S
u
is a measurement of the probability distribution of (u) away from the Gaussian distribution, and
for Gaussian distribution, we have S
u
=0. S
u
0 indicates that (u) curve is skewed to the left-hand
side, and the distribution (u) is skewed to the right-hand side for S
u
0. The fourth-order moment,
i.e. the atness factor, is dened as
F
u
= u
4
}(u
2
)
2
=
_
+

u
2
(u) du
_
_ _
+

u
2
(u) du
_
2
.
F
u
is the measurement of (u) curves atness, and for the Gaussian ow eld, we have F
u
=3.0. A
large value of F
u
indicates that the (u) distribution changes much steeply and has a long skirt,
this means that (u) has a limited value at large u.
With the variable integral time average (VITA) techniques, Alfredsson and Johansson (1989)
obtained S
u
= 0.8 and F
u
= 3.6 at ,
+
= 3, S
u
= 0.0 and F
u
= 2.3 at ,
+
= 13 and S
u
= 0.4 and
F
u
= 3.1 at ,
+
= 220. They pointed out that F
u
increased as the wall was approached, and there
existed the intermittent phenomenon. Ueda and Hinze (1975) obtained F
u
3.0 for ,
+
5, F
u
reached minimum at ,
+
= 15 where u

}U

is maximum and F
u
= 3.0 for ,
+
100. With regard to
S
u
, they obtained S
u
0 for ,
+
15 and S
u
= 0 for ,
+
100. Ueda and Hinze (1975) suggested
that the burst caused by ejection tended to decrease as the wall was closed, which led to the small
intermittent factor and large value of F
u
.
3.3.1. The characteristics of skewness factor S
u
It can be seen from Fig. 5 that the distribution of S
u
is almost the same for both smooth and
riblets surfaces. We obtain S
u
0.0 for ,
+
10, S
u
=0.4 0.5 for ,
+
10 and S
u
= 0.0 as the
potential ow region is approached.
3.3.2. The characteristics of atness factor F
u
It is seen from Fig. 6 that F
u
3.0 for ,
+
5 and F
u
3.0 for ,
+
40 with regard to both
short and long riblets plates. Generally speaking, the riblets plate has little eect on F
u
.
In the more careful investigations conducted by Vukoslav cevi c et al. (1992) and Park and Wallace
(1994), they used much larger grooves as the riblets surface. Their experimental results showed that,
in the groove, F
u
and S
u
are greater than that for smooth plate. In our experiment, owing to the
small scale of the groove, we cannot give out the experimental data in the groove, and the results
above the groove are in accordance with the experimental results of Bacher and Smith (1985).
3.4. The low-speed streak
For turbulent boundary layer over the smooth surface, the previous experimental results indicated
that the distribution of the low-speed streaks obeys the log-normal distribution in the near-wall region
(Nakagawa and Nezu, 1981; Smith and Metzler, 1983), i.e.,
P(z
+
) = Bexp
_

1
2
[Bln(z
+
}A)]
2
__
(2)
0.5
z
+
,
224 J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229
Fig. 5. The distribution of skewness factor.
J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229 225
Fig. 6. The distribution of atness factor.
226 J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229
Fig. 7. The log-normal distribution of low-speed streak spacing.
S =
_
n

i=1
(z
+
i
z
+
)}(n 1)
_
0.5
,
s = S}z
+
A = z
+
}(1 + s
2
)
0.5
,
B = ln(1 + s
2
)
0.5
,
where z
+
is the non-dimensional spacing of the low-speed streaks (z
+
= zU

}v), z
+
is the average
of z
+
, S is standard deviation, s is the coecient of S and n is the total number of the sample. The
J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229 227
Fig. 8. The log-normal probability distribution of low-speed streak spacing (x = 15cm; L = 50cm).
value of z
+
is called the most probable value when P(z
+
) reaches maximum, we take it as z
+
m
, then
dP(z
+
)
dz
+
= 0,
z
+
m
= z
+
(1 + s
2
)
1.5
.
By reading and analyzing the ow visualization pictures carefully, we rst found that the non-
dimensional spacing of the low-speed streaks obeys the log-normal distribution for ow over riblets
surface (Fig. 7). In this paper, the value of z
+
m
is 20% smaller than that for the corresponding value
of z
+
, this is in agreement with the Smith and Metzler (1983) and Kline et al. (1967) results for
smooth wall.
In order to further verify that z
+
obeys the log-normal distribution, we present the gure under
the coordinates of log-normal probability distribution (Fig. 8), where
:(z
+
) =
_
z
+
0
P(z
+
) dz
+
_

0
P(z
+
) dz
+
.
It is seen from Fig. 8 that :(z
+
) indeed obeys the log-normal distribution.
Fig. 9 shows the variation of z
+
with x for L=20 cm. It is seen that z
+
decreases signicantly in
the riblets plate region, and the maximum value of this decrease reaches about 20%. In comparison
with the LDV measuremental results, we may conclude that the drag reduction is associated with
the decrease of z
+
. Furthermore, the value z
+
= 106 at x = 25 cm is less than the value z
+
= 112
at x =5 cm and z
+
= 124 at x =40 cm, and is greater than the riblets surface results, this means
that the riblets plate does aect the region near the downstream of the riblets plate.
4. Conclusion
For the ow over riblets surface, the thickness of the viscous sublayer, the region of buer layer
and the integral constant C in the log-law is greater than that for smooth plate, which implies that
the present riblets plate possesses drag reduction property.
228 J.-J. Wang et al. / Fluid Dynamics Research 27 (2000) 217229
Fig. 9. The distribution of non-dimensional low-speed streak spacing (L = 20 cm).
The maximum value of streamwise turbulent intensity (u

}U

)
max
is 6.7% greater for riblets plate
than for smooth one, and its mean position is 6.4% less for riblets plate than for smooth one.
The riblets surface has less eect on atness factor and skewness factor.
The ow visualization shows that the low-speed streaks also obey the log-normal distribution
for turbulent boundary layer ow over riblet surface, and the drag reduction is associated with the
decrease of non-dimensional mean spacing of the low-speed streaks.
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