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Science 19 May 2000:
Vol. 288. no. 5469, pp. 1230 - 1234
DOI: 10.1126/science.288.5469.1230
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Reports

Suppressing Wall Turbulence by Means of a Transverse Traveling Wave

Yiqing Du, 1 George Em Karniadakis 2*

Direct numerical simulations of wall-bounded flow reveal that turbulence production can be suppressed by a transverse traveling wave. Flow visualizations show that the near-wall streaks are eliminated, in contrast to other turbulence-control techniques, leading to a large shear stress reduction. The traveling wave can be induced by a spanwise force that is confined within the viscous sublayer; it has its maximum at the wall and decays exponentially away from it. We demonstrate the application of this approach in salt water, using arrays of electromagnetic tiles that produce the required traveling wave excitation at a high efficiency.

1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
2 Division of Applied Mathematics, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)