Turbulence suppression by streamwise-varying wall rotation in pipe flow.

Direct numerical simulations of turbulent pipe flow subjected to streamwise-varying wall rotation are performed. This control method is observed to be able to significantly reduce the friction drag and even laminarize the flow under certain control parameters, which are dictated by velocity amplitude and wavelength, for friction Reynolds number Re{\tau} =180. Net energy saving is achievable and the variation of wavelength is found to be more efficient than velocity amplitude in reducing the drag. A series of turbulence statistics are discussed in order to elucidate the impact of steady spatially oscillatory forcing, including budgets of transport equation, turbulence intensity, two-point correlation and one-dimensional spectra. An overall assessment of global energy balance identifies a trend toward laminar regime. The control-induced boundary layer, whose thickness is closely related to control wavelength, is shown to induce a streamwise wavy streak pattern, with its orientation governed by the shear force stemming from gradients of mean velocity. Such strong spatial non-homogeneity is found to significantly reduce the streamwise scale of flow structure. The analysis of conditional-averaged fields reveals an emergence of strong transverse advection, which is observed to cause asymmetrical modification of near-wall quasi-streamwise vortex pair, accompanied by the transverse tilt or diffusion of low-speed streaks and the suppression of its surrounding sweep events, leading to the disruption of near-wall quasi-organized flow structure and hence in turn contributing to the decline of turbulent shear stress.