Revisiting “bursts” in wall-bounded turbulent flows

Turbulent signals are known to exhibit burstlike activities, which affect the turbulence statistics at both large and small scales of the flow. In our study, we pursue this problem from the perspective of an event-based framework, where bursting events are studied across multiple scales in terms of both their size and duration. To illustrate our method and assess any dependence on the Reynolds number (Re), we use two data sets: from the Melbourne wind tunnel (Re≈14750) and from SLTEST, an atmospheric surface layer experiment (Re≈106). We show that an index, namely, the "burstiness index,"can be used successfully to describe the multiscale nature of turbulent bursting while accounting for the small-scale intermittency effects. With this index, we demonstrate that irrespective of Re, the presence of large amplitude fluctuations in the instantaneous velocity variance and momentum flux signals are governed by the coherent structures in the flow. For small-scale turbulence, a Re dependence is noted while studying the scalewise evolution of the burstiness features of second-order streamwise velocity increments ((Δu)2). Specific to the wind-tunnel data set, the burstiness index of the (Δu)2 signal displays a strong dependence on height and decreases as the scales increase with the maximum being obtained at scales comparable to the dissipative structures. However, such features are nearly absent in the atmospheric flows. To conclude, this research paves a way to evaluate the effect of bursts on the turbulence statistics at any specified scale of the flow