An experimental contribution to near-wall measurements by means of a special laser Doppler anemometry technique

A new experimental technique for the investigation of near-wall turbulence using laser Doppler anemometry is presented, which allows an accurate measurement of the flow field very close to the wall, with good resolution and a high data rate. Such a technique is tested in a fully developed turbulent flow (with Reynolds numbers between 4,300 and 67,000) by carrying out a careful statistical analysis of the streamwise and wall-normal velocity components within the near-wall region, at distances from the wall ranging from approximately y(+) = 1 to y(+) = 100. The velocity profiles, Reynolds stresses and higher-order moments of the two-dimensional boundary layer are presented. The results, which are in agreement with the most recent data in the literature, testify the validity of the proposed experimental solution. Moreover, the accuracy of the results allows the friction velocity to be calculated as the intercept at the wall of the best linear fit of the total stress profile; in this way, an unambiguous examination of the normalized statistics is possible.