Final Report Summary - WALLTURB (A European Synergy for the assessment of wall turbulence)
The WALLTURB project was a challenging research program within the objectives of the EU in Aeronautics and of strong industrial interest at intermediate and long term. The global aim of WALLTURB was to bring a significant progress in the understanding and modelling of near wall turbulence in boundary layers.
To reach these objectives, the WALLTURB consortium took advantage of the recent progress in the experimental and numerical approaches of turbulence and the complementary skills of leading teams in Europe working on turbulence. It has generated a large and original database, with recent and relevant data about near wall turbulence. This database was shared by the partners to extract relevant physical data and will be used by the scientific community in the next years.
This database comprises new experimental and DNS data, giving new insights into both zero and adverse pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer physics, with and without separation. This database was used by the partners in the frame of WALLTURB to improve RANS, and LES near wall turbulence models and to investigate LODS / LES coupling near the wall. The work performed has allowed development of new turbulence models and the assessment of the relative merits and drawbacks of these models. These models were also evaluated by AIRBUS in the industrial context. It has also generated new physical insights, both with regard to classical scaling laws (on which most models to-date have been based) and turbulent structures (on which future models will most likely be based.)
Globally, it should be said that, although the time scale of turbulence model development is much larger than that of this project, the WALLTURB consortium can claim that a real step forward was done, thanks to the unique possibility offered by this type of project: a tight cooperation, at the highest level of competence, between scientists of different origins and different skills, supported by a good amount of funding.