Experimental observation of horizontal coherent turbulent structures in a straight flume

Abstract

The present paper describes results of laboratory experiments carried out to investigate the evolution of horizontal coherent turbulent structures for different roughness conditions of channel walls. The occurrence of turbulent events (inward interaction, ejection, sweep and burst) is identified through the conditioned quadrant analysis. The filtered data set is used to determine the probability density distribution of each turbulent event. Particular attention is focused on sweep and ejection events and peculiar maps showing the distributions of the horizontal Reynolds shear stress, for each examined experimental condition, are also presented and discussed.