Large-Eddy Simulation of the Flat-plate Turbulent Boundary Layer at High Reynolds numbers

iii To my family iv Acknowledgements I would like to first express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Dale Pullin, who provided a chance to work on exciting and fulfilling research projects. I sincerely appreciate his incredible patience in teaching me the fundamental process of research in the computational fluid dynamics of turbulence. I am also grateful for his understanding my pursuing a minor in Applied & Compu-tational Mathematics, which helped me expand my intellectual horizon. Being honored to be one of his students, I could not have asked for a better advisor. I also gratefully acknowledge the help-ful comments and suggestions on my thesis from the members of my thesis committee, Professors Beverley McKeon, Tim Colonius, and Anthony Leonard. I was fortunate to participate in a fruitful collaborative effort on extending the capabilities of large-eddy simulations (Chapters 4 and 5) with Professor Ivan Marusic and Dr. Romain Mathis from the University of Melbourne. I learned much from our discussions, especially the nuances of experimental research. Thanks also go to Professor Andrew Ooi, who most generously provided computational resources at the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI), and Zambri Harun who provided experimental measurements of the adverse-pressure-gradient turbulent bound-ary layer (Chapter 5). Life at Caltech was fascinating, thanks to my fellow graduate students at GALCIT and former and current members in the Allen Puckett Laboratory of Computational Fluid Dynamics; I thank Andrew, Alejandro, Geoff, Jack, Manuel, Namiko, Richard, and Yue for their friendships and man