Shear Stress Statistics in a Compound Channel Flow

The results of comprehensive measurements of three-dimensional turbulent velocities carried out in a laboratory compound channel are presented. Tests were performed in a two-stage channel with a smooth main channel bed consisting of concrete and rough floodplains and sloping banks. Instantaneous velocities were measured with the use of a three-component acoustic Doppler velocimeter. The main aim of the study is the recognition of structure of Reynolds stresses in turbulent open channel flows. Particular attention has been paid to bursting events such as ejections and sweeps. The bursting phenomenon occurs originally near the buffer layer and then shows a coherent or organized flow structure during its convection process. The probability density distributions of the turbulent velocities were measured at different distances from the bed in the main channel and also above the inclined walls. In the main channel, the lateral turbulent velocity is seen to follow the normal Gaussian distribution more closely than the remaining two components. Above the inclined walls, all distributions turned out to have greater skewness. The probability density distributions of correlations between velocity fluctuations were also calculated. These distributions have long tails and sharp peaks and fit the theoretical distributions very well. The structure of instantaneous Reynolds stresses was analyzed by a quadrant technique with an arbitrarily chosen threshold level. It has been shown that the largest contribution to turbulent stresses comes from the second quadrant (ejection) and the fourth quadrant (sweep). The basic temporal characteristics for quadrant events, like the average and maximum time for a zero hole size, have been determined in the study. Calculations of maximum duration times for all events reveal that times are greater for even quadrants than for odd quadrants