Influence of the Atmospheric Surface Layer on a Turbulent Flow Downstream of a Ship Superstructure

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes a set of turbulence measurements at sea in the area of high flow distortion in the near-wake and recirculation zone behind a ship's superstructure that is similar in geometry to a helicopter hangar/flight deck arrangement found on many modern U.S. Navy ships. The instrumented ship is a 32-m-long training vessel operated by the United States Naval Academy that has been modified by adding a representative flight deck and hangar structure. The flight deck is instrumented with up to seven sonic anemometers/thermometers that are used to obtain simultaneous velocity measurements at various spatial locations on the flight deck, and one sonic anemometer at bow mast is used to characterize inflow atmospheric boundary conditions. Data characterizing wind over the deck at an incoming angle of 0° (head winds) and wind speeds from 2 to 10 m s−1 obtained in the Chesapeake Bay are presented and discussed. Turbulent statistics of inflow conditions are analyzed using the Kaimal universal turbulence spectral model for the atmospheric surface layer and show that for the present dataset this approach eliminates the need to account for platform motion in computing variances and covariances. Conditional sampling of mean flow and turbulence statistics at the flight deck indicate no statistically significant variations between unstable, stable, and neutral atmospheric inflow conditions, and the results agree with the published data for flows over the backward-facing step geometries.