The origin of wall-shear stress fluctuations in wall-bounded turbulence

Abstract

The origin of wall shear-stress fluctuations in wall turbulence was studied through energy dissipation at the wall. While confirming the universality in wall dissipation at small inner scales, the dissipation at larger scales is a consequence of near-wall scale interactions. In particular, the energy transport from the universal small to larger scale strengthens with Reynolds number due to the growing number of intermediate scales associated with the log layer. We anticipate that these insights broadly apply to all canonical wall-bounded turbulence for sufficiently high Reynolds numbers.