Stereo PIV measurements of oscillatory plasma forcing in the cross-plane of a channel flow

The present work describes an experimental investigation that applies stereo particle image velocimetry in a cross-plane of a turbulent channel flow that is additionally perturbed by spanwise oscillatory body forces, induced by a plasma actuator and designed to mimic the effect of spanwise wall oscillations. The experiment is aimed at retrieving the forcing-correlated scales and the turbulent flow stochastic fluctuations for the measured cross-plane. The first are macroscopic scales and require a larger investigation domain while the latter benefit of a higher resolution. Furthermore, the extended flow-field dynamic range posed a challenge on the experiment design, finally leading to an optimal tradeoff. The results of the unactuated flow compare well to the direct numerical simulations of Hoyas and Jimenez (2008), while the actuated case demonstrates strong near-wall momentum addition and spanwise modulation of the streamwise flow component.