Large-eddy simulation of transition to turbulence in boundary layers (Q1389989)

We present large-eddy simulation results for laminar-to-turbulent transition in a spatially developing boundary layer. The disturbances are ingested into a laminar flow through an unsteady suction-and-blowing strip. The filtered, three-dimensional time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations are integrated numerically using spectral, high-order finite-differences, and a three-stage low-storage Runge-Kutta/Crank-Nicolson time-advancement method. The buffer-domain technique is used for the outflow boundary condition. The localized dynamic model used to parametrize the subgrid-scale stresses has a significant impact at the beginning of the nonlinear transition (or intermittency) region. The flow structures found in the present simulation compare well with both the experiments and the theory.