Data-driven dimensionality reduction methods such as proper orthogonal decomposition and dynamic mode decomposition have proven to be useful for exploring complex phenomena within fluid dynamics and beyond. A well-known challenge for these techniques is posed by the continuous symmetries, e.g. translations and rotations, of the system under consideration, as drifts in the data dominate the modal expansions without providing an insight into the dynamics of the problem. In the present study, we address this issue for fluid flows in rectangular channels by formulating a continuous symmetry reduction method that eliminates the translations in the streamwise and spanwise directions simultaneously. We demonstrate our method by computing the symmetry-reduced dynamic mode decomposition (SRDMD) of sliding windows of data obtained from the transitional plane-Couette and turbulent plane-Poiseuille flow simulations. In the former setting, SRDMD captures the dynamics in the vicinity of the invariant solutions with translation symmetries, i.e. travelling waves and relative periodic orbits, whereas in the latter, our calculations reveal episodes of turbulent time evolution that can be approximated by a low-dimensional linear expansion.

The nonlinear response of a compressible boundary layer to unsteady free-stream vortical fluctuations of the convected-gust type is investigated theoretically and numerically. The free-stream Mach number is assumed to be of and the effects of compressibility, including aerodynamic heating and heat transfer at the wall, are taken into account. Attention is focused on low-frequency perturbations, which induce strong streamwise-elongated components of the boundary-layer disturbances, known as streaks or Klebanoff modes. The amplitude of the disturbances is intense enough for nonlinear interactions to occur within the boundary layer. The generation and nonlinear evolution of the streaks, which acquire an magnitude, are described on a self-consistent and first-principle basis using the mathematical framework of the nonlinear unsteady compressible boundary-region equations, which are derived herein for the first time. The free-stream flow is studied by including the boundary-layer displacement effect and the solution is matched asymptotically with the boundary-layer flow. The nonlinear interactions inside the boundary layer drive an unsteady two-dimensional flow of acoustic nature in the outer inviscid region through the displacement effect. A close analogy with the flow over a thin oscillating airfoil is exploited to find analytical solutions. This analogy has been widely employed to investigate steady flows over boundary layers, but is considered herein for the first time for unsteady boundary layers. In the subsonic regime the perturbation is felt from the plate in all directions, while at supersonic speeds the disturbance only propagates within the dihedron defined by the Mach line. Numerical computations are performed for carefully chosen parameters that characterize three practical applications: turbomachinery systems, supersonic flight conditions and wind tunnel experiments. The results show that nonlinearity plays a marked stabilizing role on the velocity and temperature streaks, and this is found to be the case for low-disturbance environments such as flight conditions. Increasing the free-stream Mach number inhibits the kinematic fluctuations but enhances the thermal streaks, relative to the free-stream velocity and temperature respectively, and the overall effect of nonlinearity becomes weaker. An abrupt deviation of the nonlinear solution from the linear one is observed in the case pertaining to a supersonic wind tunnel. Large-amplitude thermal streaks and the strong abrupt stabilizing effect of nonlinearity are two new features of supersonic flows. The present study provides an accurate signature of nonlinear streaks in compressible boundary layers, which is indispensable for the secondary instability analysis of unsteady streaky boundary-layer flows.

Turbulence in the flow of fluid through a pipe can be suppressed by buoyancy forces. As the suppression of turbulence leads to severe heat transfer deterioration, this is an important and undesirable phenomenon in both heating and cooling applications. Vertical flow is often considered, as the axial buoyancy force can help drive the flow. With heating measured by the buoyancy parameter above which the flow will be laminarised or switch to the convection-driven type. Our analysis suggests that it is the weakened rolls, rather than the streaks, which appear to be critical for laminarisation.

Recent experimental observations (Kühnen et al., Nat. Phys., vol. 14, 2018b, pp. 386–390) have shown that flattening a turbulent streamwise velocity profile in pipe flow destabilises the turbulence so that the flow relaminarises. We show that a similar phenomenon exists for laminar pipe flow profiles in the sense that the nonlinear stability of the laminar state is enhanced as the profile becomes more flattened. The flattening of the laminar base profile is produced by an artificial localised body force designed to mimic an obstacle used in the experiments of Kühnen et al. (Flow Turbul. Combust., vol. 100, 2018a, pp. 919–943) and the nonlinear stability measured by the size of the energy of the initial perturbations needed to trigger transition. Significant drag reduction is also observed for the turbulent flow when triggered by sufficiently large disturbances. In order to make the nonlinear stability computations more efficient, we examine how indicative the minimal seed – the disturbance of smallest energy for transition – is in measuring transition thresholds. We first show that the minimal seed is relatively robust to base profile changes and spectral filtering. We then compare the (unforced) transition behaviour of the minimal seed with several forms of randomised initial conditions in the range of Reynolds numbers $Re=2400$ – $10\,000$ and find that the energy of the minimal seed after the Orr and oblique phases of its evolution is close to that of a critical localised random disturbance. In this sense, the minimal seed at the end of the oblique phase can be regarded as a good proxy for typical disturbances (here taken to be the localised random ones) and is thus used as initial condition in the simulations with the body force. The enhanced nonlinear stability and drag reduction predicted in the present study are an encouraging first step in modelling the experiments of Kühnen et al. and should motivate future developments to fully exploit the benefits of this promising direction for flow control.

The generation, nonlinear evolution, and wall-transpiration control of unsteady Görtler vortices in an incompressible boundary layer over a concave plate is studied theoretically and numerically. Görtler rolls are initiated and driven by free-stream vortical perturbations of which only the low-frequency components are considered because they penetrate the most into the boundary layer. The formation and development of the disturbances are governed by the nonlinear unsteady boundary-region equations with the centrifugal force included. These equations are subject to appropriate initial and outer boundary conditions, which account for the influence of the upstream and free-stream forcing in a rigorous and mutually consistent manner. Numerical solutions show that the stabilizing effect on nonlinearity, which also occurs in flat-plate boundary layers, is significantly enhanced in the presence of centrifugal forces. Sufficiently downstream, the nonlinear vortices excited at different free-stream turbulence intensities Tu saturate at the same level, proving that the initial amplitude of the forcing becomes unimportant. At low Tu, the disturbance exhibits a quasi-exponential growth with the growth rate being intensified for more curved plates and for lower frequencies. At higher Tu, in the typical range of turbomachinery applications, the Görtler vortices do not undergo a modal stage as nonlinearity saturates rapidly, and the wall curvature does not affect the boundary-layer response. Good quantitative agreement with data from direct numerical simulations and experiments is obtained. Steady spanwise-uniform and spanwise-modulated zero-mass-flow-rate wall transpiration is shown to attenuate the growth of the Görtler vortices significantly. A novel modified version of the Fukagata-Iwamoto-Kasagi identity, used for the first time to study a transitional flow, reveals which terms in the streamwise momentum balance are mostly affected by the wall transpiration, thus offering insight into the increased nonlinear growth of the wall-shear stress.

In the past two decades, our understanding of the transition to turbulence in shear flows with linearly stable laminar solutions has greatly improved. Regarding the susceptibility of the laminar flow, two concepts have been particularly useful: the edge states and the minimal seeds. In this nonlinear picture of the transition, the basin boundary of turbulence is set by the edge state's stable manifold and this manifold comes closest in energy to the laminar equilibrium at the minimal seed. We begin this paper by presenting numerical experiments in which three-dimensional perturbations are too energetic to trigger turbulence in pipe flow but they do lead to turbulence when their amplitude is reduced. We show that this seemingly counterintuitive observation is in fact consistent with the fully nonlinear description of the transition mediated by the edge state. In order to understand the physical mechanisms behind this process, we measure the turbulent kinetic energy production and dissipation rates as a function of the radial coordinate. Our main observation is that the transition to turbulence relies on the energy amplification away from the wall, as opposed to the turbulence itself, whose energy is predominantly produced near the wall. This observation is further supported by the similar analyses on the minimal seeds and the edge states. Furthermore, we show that the time evolution of production-over-dissipation curves provides a clear distinction between the different initial amplification stages of the transition to turbulence from the minimal seed.