The Relationship Between Surface Pressure Spectra and Vorticity in a Turbulent Boundary Layer

Abstract: The modeling of surface pressure wave number spectra beneath a turbulent boundary layer is reviewed and reconsidered in terms of the vorticity in the flow. Using a solution based on the vorticity equation and Squires theorem, which was originally given by Chase(1991), it is shown that the complete solution for surface pressure spectrum can be specified using the non-linear turbulence-turbulence interaction terms as sources. It is then shown that the surface pressure can be directly related to the vorticity in the flow. The results are checked against a Direct Numerical Simulation of a channel flow configuration. It is shown that the vorticity associated with the wall shear stress decays rapidly over a distance of about seven wall units and so the outer vorticity dominates in the majority of the flow. The vorticity correlation functions are evaluated and it is shown that the length scale of the vorticity normal the wall is only about ten wall units so the flow can be modeled as the superposition of uncorrelated vortex sheets. Finally a model for the surface pressure wave number spectrum is developed by modeling the vorticity spectrum based on the distribution of root mean square (rms) vorticity in the flow, and an integral length scale that is about ten wall units. Using inputs from the numerical simulation, a good fit to existing empirical models for surface pressure spectra is obtained.