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Turbulent characteristics within roughness sublayer over spanwise homogeneous transversal bars

Turbulent characteristics within shear layer have been studied, recently, within vegetative canopy, buildings, dunes. Kevin-Helmholtz instability triggered hairpin vortex shedding has been widely concluded as the "signature" of mixing layer analogy. However, convoluted roughness types complicate the observing practice of turbulent evolving progress. To simplify that, spanwise homogeneous roughness has been adopted in this work to capture the streamwise flow alternations under different streamwise roughness element distances. Streamwise successive object distance $λ_x$ is used to show the roughness element distance. The transitional trends from turbulent channel flow to canopy flow have been observed from Case 1 to Case 4. However, when $λ_x/h<1.0$, as successive distance decreases, the evidences indicate turbulent flow is transferring from canopy flow into channel flow from Case 4 to Case 6. Instantaneous results verifies the enhancement of turbulent mixing and decreasing turbulent coherency. The attached-eddy hypothesis (AEH) becomes valid in $λ_x/h<1.0$ Cases. Meanwhile, Reynolds-averaged flow results show the roughness shear "curve" effectiveness will decrease when $λ_x$ keeps decreasing after $λ_x/h<1.0$. The probability density function (PDF) of three fluctuating variables on a sampling point over element display the "increasing-decreasing" trend of decreasing spacing effect on upper region, wherein the maximal effect emerges in Case 2 and 3. And the swirling structural visualizations also demonstrate the progress of turbulent structure changing in roughness sublayer at different streamwise successive object distances. Finally, the instantaneous results show wall-normal momentum flux transports and turbulence swirling structures are correlated to the element spacing.