NEAR-WALL MODEL FOR BOUNDARY-LAYER TURBULENCE

The evolution of an intermittently created isolated three-dimensional turbulent eddy near a wall is followed in space and time on the assumption that its structure evolves on three separate time scales, a shear interaction one, a viscous one, and a nonlinear one. The large-time limit of the solution for the shear interaction stage shows many of the observed features of the near-wall turbulence structure such as the formation of shear layers, of streaks, and of streamwise vortices. It also provides initial conditions for the viscous and nonlinear stages showing viscous decay of convected structures and the possibility of a singularity in the nonlinear development. The eddy model is also used to construct a new model for the turbulent shear stress showing strong similarity to Prandtl's mixing-length model.