Large-eddy simulation of turbulent natural-

bed flow
Cite as: Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5116522
Submitted: 25 June 2019 . Accepted: 09 July 2019 . Published Online: 05 August 2019

G. Alfonsi , D. Ferraro , A. Lauria , and R. Gaudio

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Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5116522 31, 085105

© 2019 Author(s).
 Physics of Fluids ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf

Large-eddy simulation of turbulent

natural-bed flow
Cite as: Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522
Submitted: 25 June 2019 • Accepted: 9 July 2019 •
Published Online: 5 August 2019

G. Alfonsi, D. Ferraro, A. Lauria, and R. Gaudioa)

AFFILIATIONS
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Università della Calabria, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy

a)
Electronic mail: gaudio@unical.it

ABSTRACT
The turbulent flow in natural rough beds is a complex subject, still poorly understood despite the longstanding effort of several researchers. In
the present work, a turbulent open-channel flow experiment, with a pebble bed at Reynolds and Froude numbers, respectively, Re = 4.65 × 104
and Fr = 0.186, has been simulated using the Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) technique, in which the wall-adapting local eddy viscosity subgrid
scale closure model is used and in the presence of an air-water interface to take into account the effects of the interface deformation in the flow
turbulence statistics under a low relative submergence condition. The simulations have been compared with a companion experiment, where
the channel bottom is constituted by four pebble layers. For the simulations, the pebble-bed surface has been captured with a high-resolution
three-dimensional laser scanner and used to morphologically characterize the numerical channel bottom. Results are presented in terms of
turbulence statistics and turbulent laws, showing a good agreement with those obtained in the experiment. Since a good convergence between
simulation and experimental results was obtained, the LES dataset was used to compute the Turbulent Kinetic Energy (TKE) dissipation rate
across the water depth. The mesh resolution allows showing a detailed TKE dissipation rate distribution across the water depth. Moreover,
the equilibrium between TKE production and dissipation was checked to verify the overlap layer existence under low relative submergence
condition. Finally, a new procedure for vortex-visualization is implemented, based on the relationship between the vorticity and the TKE
dissipation rate.
Published under license by AIP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5116522., s

I. INTRODUCTION
The fluid-dynamic phenomena occurring in turbulent open-
channel flows in a low relative submergence condition play a key
role in natural rivers and watercourses, where the strategic element
that generates these complex phenomena is the presence of a macro-
roughness bed of natural origin. In recent years, this subject has been
faced by researchers, both experimentally and numerically. With
regard to the experimental field, a noticeable effort has been made
about the turbulent characteristics in open-channel flows.1–3 In the
last two decades, the spatial-averaging method (double-averaging
method) became popular, and it was used in many works to capture
the heterogeneous nature of the bed in terms of stress characteris-
tics.4–8 Most recently, the low relative submergence raised interest
in researchers, and some works about the turbulent characteristics
in this condition have been published.7–13
In the numerical field, the Large Eddies Simulation (LES) tech-
nique was successfully used, and a large number of authors showed
the reliability of this technique in representing both the mean and
instantaneous flow fields. Nevertheless, most of the numerical works
on this subject are related to regular-roughness geometries; some-
times, they use mathematical functions to represent the bed rough-
ness. Among others, Stoesser and Nikora14 performed a LES of a tur-
bulent flow over square ribs mounted on a wall. Bomminayuni and
Stoesser15 performed a LES simulation of the flow over a channel bed
artificially roughened with hemispheres and investigated the effect
of the roughness on higher-order turbulence statistical moments.
A further LES simulation in the case of an open-channel flow over
three kinds of macroroughness beds, obtained with spheres of dif-
ferent sizes and arrangements, was proposed by Fang et al.,16 who
mainly investigated the effects of permeability on the hydrauli-
cally macrorough flow characteristics. Recently, Fang et al.17 per-
formed a LES simulation in a square duct roughened with perpen-
dicular and V-shaped ribs. Taking into account a macroroughness
obtained through three-dimensional (3D) dunes at the laboratory
scale, Omidyeganeh and Piomelli18,19 executed a LES simulation

Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522 31, 085105-1

Published under license by AIP Publishing
 Physics of Fluids
using the Lagrangian dynamic eddy-viscosity subgrid scale (SGS)
closure model. The bedform three-dimensionality was imposed by
shifting a standard two-dimensional dune shape in the streamwise
direction according to a sine wave; the results were validated against
experiments.
As for nonregular roughness, Hardy et al.20,21 performed a LES
simulation of the flow over a gravel surface, investigating the role of
the near-bed turbulence and Reynolds number on the flow-structure
development process. Moreover, Stoesser22 proposed a physically
realistic method for the LES of turbulent open-channel flow over
a granular bed, in which the description of the bed roughness was
accomplished by means of a roughness-geometry function together
with a forcing term in the momentum equation. They mainly inves-
tigated the effects of permeability on the hydraulically macrorough
flow. Overall, these studies provided a relatively good insight of the
near-wall turbulence in the cases considered, but the case of the nat-
urally rough flow still needs more investigation. Furthermore, the
free surface is often assumed as a rigid frictionless boundary so that
its vertical movement is neglected, also in the cases of flows under a
low relative submergence condition. In summary, most of the exist-
ing research related to open-channel turbulent flows over a natural
highly rough bed is based on experimental activities, whereas the
majority of numerical works are related to artificially and regular-
roughness beds. In this work, the rigid lid condition was abandoned,
and the VoF (Volume of Fluid) technique was adopted in order to
follow the free-surface behavior. A LES of turbulent open-channel
flow with a highly rough bed was then performed, in which the Wall-
Adapting Local Eddy viscosity (WALE) SGS closure model23,24 was
used. Computational solvers embedded into the OpenFOAM C++
digital library were utilized then, taking into consideration the effects
of the moving free surface in the flow turbulence statistics under a
low relative submergence condition. The results of the simulations
were compared with those obtained in a companion experiment.
Shifting the focus to the flow visualization, we propose a
new procedure for vortex-visualization based on the relationship
between the vorticity and the Turbulent Kinetic Energy (TKE) dissi-
pation rate, ε. Many techniques in the literature exploiting the eigen-
values of the velocity gradient tensor or the related invariants have
been developed in order to identify coherent turbulent structures.
Jeong and Hussain25 proposed the λ2 method for the education of
the coherent structures of turbulence by considering the problem
of the pressure minimum. Zhou et al.26 proposed a method for
the detection of vortical structures. The authors adopted the frame
independent criterion of visualizing isosurfaces of the imaginary
part of the complex eigenvalue pair of the velocity gradient tensor
that represents the local swirling strength of the vortex, quantified
by λci . A further flow visualization technique is the Q-criterion,27
which exploits the velocity-gradient tensor second invariant in
order to visualize the coherent structures into the regions where
the vorticity magnitude prevails over the strain-rate magnitude.28
TABLE I. Characteristic parameters of the experimental and simulated flow cases.
S (%) B (m) Q (l/s) hw (m) U (m/s)
0.4 1.00 46.5 0.185 0.251
Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522
Published under license by AIP Publishing
ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf
Despite these techniques exploiting different physical and math-
ematical quantities, they can be made equivalent through the
introduction of an equivalent threshold.29 In this work, the Q-
criterion was chosen to validate the proposed procedure for vortex-
visualization used to extract coherent structures belonging to the
inertial subrange.
II. EXPERIMENTATION
The experimental setup of the companion experiment is con-
cisely summarized. The experimental test was carried out at the
Laboratorio “Grandi Modelli Idraulici” of the University of Calabria
(Italy) in a 16 m long, 1 m wide, 0.8 m high tilting flume with a rect-
angular cross section. The flume inlet incorporated a stilling tank,
an uphill spillway, a fine grid, and a honeycomb for the damping
of the residual pump vibrations and the reduction of the incom-
ing turbulence. At the flume outlet, the water depth was regulated
by an adjustable tailgate. In the downstream restitution channel, a
second honeycomb was placed upstream to a Bazin weir and was
used to measure the discharge with an accuracy less than 2%. Natu-
ral nonuniform pebbles were spread onto the channel bed in four
layers, with median size d50 = 70 mm. The 2.5 m long test sec-
tion was located 10.0 m downstream of the inlet for an appropriate
development of the boundary layer along the flume centerline, to
avoid side-wall effects.9,10,30 The measuring grid included 25 vertical-
velocity profiles, 2 cm spaced along the streamwise direction, 0.5 cm
and 0.3 cm spaced in the vertical direction in the proximity of the
free surface and of the bottom, respectively.
A down-looking four-beam acoustic Doppler velocimeter
(ADV) (Vectrino, by Nortek) was used for the local pointwise mea-
sure of the three instantaneous components of the fluid velocity. The
3D instantaneous velocity components (streamwise u, spanwise v,
and vertical w1 and w2 , with fluctuations u′ , v ′ , w1′ , and w2′ , along
the x, y and z axes, respectively) were measured in the x–z plane
along the centerline. For each point of the measuring grid, the data
sampling frequency and the sampling time were 100 Hz and 300 s,
respectively, which were found to be adequate in order to achieve
the statistically time-independent turbulent quantities, as obtained
by Dey and Das.8
The velocity measurements were taken from the lowest accessi-
ble position into the bed grain gaps up to an elevation of about 5 cm
below the water surface, owing to the limitation of the ADV down-
looking probe (the measurement volume is located at about 5 cm
below the emitter). The high resolution ADV measurements can
suffer from parasitical noise.31–35 Considering that the four-receiver
ADV gives redundant information on the third velocity component,
which is measured simultaneously twice (obtaining w1 and w2 ), the
variance of the noise was maintained less than 0.3 (this value is
commonly accepted as no noised, as it corresponds satisfactorily to
signal correlations greater than 70%). Moreover, the Signal-to-Noise
ν (m2 /s) ks (m) Δ (-) Re (-) Fr (-)
1.11 × 10− 6 0.0573 3.13 2.04 × 105 0.186
31, 085105-2
 Physics of Fluids ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf

For the numerical simulations, the physical pebble-bed surface

has been captured with a 3D scanner (Minolta Vivid 300) having
resolution of 0.1 × 0.1 mm2 and used for the characterization of the
bottom of the numerical channel (Fig. 1).

III. LES FORMULATION

The filtered unsteady Navier-Stokes equations for incompress-
ible fluids in three dimensions and conservative form were consid-
ered (Einstein summation convention applies to repeated indices, i,
j = 1, 2, 3),
∂ ūi ∂ 1 ∂ p̄ ∂τij ∂ 2 ūi
+ (ūi ūj ) = − +ν , (1)
∂t ∂xj ρ ∂xi ∂xj ∂xj ∂xj
FIG. 1. Bed topography.
∂ ūi
= 0, (2)
∂xi
where ρ is the fluid density, p is the fluid pressure, ui is the fluid
Ratio (SNR) was kept equal to about 15. Furthermore, the ellipsoid velocity along the ith axis, xi is the streamwise, vertical, and spanwise
method proposed by Goring and Nikora36 was applied for despik- axis for i = 1, 2, 3, respectively (overbars denote filtered quantities),
ing. Details about the reliability of the ADV measurements are given and t is time. The effect of the small turbulent scales is mirrored by
in Ferraro et al.,9 and Coscarella et al.10 the term (τij = ūi ūj − ui uj ), representing the SGS stress, that has to be
In Table I, the characteristic parameters of the experiment con- modeled. In the framework of the LES approach, the scales smaller
sidered in the present work for comparison with the numerical than the grid size are not resolved but accounted for through the
results are summarized, S being the longitudinal flume bottom slope, subgrid scale tensor τ ij , obtained from the following relation
B the flume breadth, Q the discharge, hw the water depth measured 1
above the maximum grain-crest level, ks the statistical roughness τij − τkk δij = −2νt Sij , (3)
3
scale defined as the biggest gap into the granular bed, Δ = hw /ks
the relative submergence, Re = 4Uhw /ν the Reynolds number, U the where:
bulk flow velocity, ν the kinematic water viscosity, Fr = U/(ghw )1/2 Sij = (
1 ∂ ūi ∂ ūj
+ ) (4)
the Froude number, and g the acceleration due to gravity. 2 ∂xj ∂xi

FIG. 2. Computational domain.

Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522 31, 085105-3

Published under license by AIP Publishing
 Physics of Fluids ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf

is the deformation-rate tensor of the resolved field. In Eq. (3), νt is TABLE II. Grid-refinement parameters.
the SGS eddy viscosity that is evaluated using the WALE SGS model,
as first proposed by Nicoud and Ducros.23 This closure, based on Grid Nx Ny Nz N tot Δx+ Δy+ +
Δzmin +
Δzmax
the square of the velocity gradient tensor, accounts for the effects
of both the strain and the rotation rate of the smallest resolved tur- 1 1024 160 384 6.3 × 107 23 22 1.50 29
bulent fluctuations. The LES governing equations were discretized 2 1024 160 420 6.9 × 107 23 22 1.25 24
by means of the Finite Volume Method (FVM). As for the solution 3 1024 160 512 8.4 × 107 23 22 1.19 22
domain, a structured mesh was built, in which the dependent vari-
ables were stored at the cell center of each cell space domain in a
co-located arrangement, where the structured grid was used in order velocity, and τ w is the mean shear stress at the wall], Ntot is the total
to avoid numerical errors due to nonorthogonality. Both convec- grid node number, Δx+ , Δy+ , Δzmin + +
, and Δzmax are the grid spacings
tive and diffusive terms were approximated with second-order Cen- in terms of wall units along the three directions, respectively, where
tral Differences (CD) schemes, while the Crank-Nicolson scheme the subscripts min and max indicate the minimum and the maxi-
was used in time. The Pressure Implicit with Split Operator (PISO) mum value, respectively. The grid was uniformly spaced in both the
technique suggested by Issa37 was employed to couple the pressure streamwise and spanwise directions, and the grid spacing in terms of
and velocity in transient computations via flux conservation. The wall units was Δx+ = Δy+ = 20. Along the vertical direction, which in
PISO procedure adopts a segregated approach, and the system of the dimensionless coordinates is ẑ = (z − zc )/hw , zc being the maximum
equations is solved sequentially. The stability of the solution proce- crest level, the grid is uniformly spaced among the pebbles (−0.54 ≤ ẑ
dure has been ensured utilizing an adaptive time step with an initial ≤ 0, Δz+ = 1), whereas in the main portion of the computing domain
value of 10−6 s in conjunction with a mean Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (Fig. 3), a grid stretching law of hyperbolic tangent type was intro-
(CFL) number limit of 0.5. In order to obtain appropriate values duced, in order to have a better spatial resolution near both the wall
of the velocity and pressure fields at the free-surface, the governing and the free-surface52
equations were solved numerically by means of the InterFoam solver
tanh[M(1 − zj )]
®
that is embedded in the OpenFoam C++ libraries. The InterFoam
code is designed for incompressible, isothermal, immiscible fluids, zjstr = Pzj + (1 − P){1 −
tanh M
}, (5)
and uses the Volume of Fluid (VoF) phase-fraction-based interface
capturing approach38 that was satisfactorily utilized in several flow
cases.39–41 The VoF method locates and tracks the free surface in
such a way that each fluid phase (air and water) occupies an indi-
vidual fraction of volume, as widely explained in Calomino et al.42
The computational domain spanned in the range −2.7 ≤ x/hw ≥ 2.7
along the streamwise direction, in the range −0.4 ≤ y/hw ≥ 0.4
along the spanwise direction (so representing the pebble-bed sur-
face captured with the high-resolution 3D laser scanner), and in
the range −0.54 ≤ z/hw ≥ 1.54 in the vertical direction (Fig. 2).
The size of the computing domain had the same dimension as the
commonly accepted domain size for smooth-bed flows.15,16 More-
over, it was large enough to contain the large-scale turbulence struc-
tures observed in the literature.43–51 The setup and boundary con-
ditions were selected similar to those of the aforementioned flume
experiment. Boundary conditions were imposed as no-slip and zero
wall-normal velocity at the pebble-bed surface. Periodic boundary
conditions were used in the streamwise direction, according to the
uniform flow condition. Periodic boundary conditions were also
applied along the spanwise direction, while, in order to represent the
effects of the water surface variations, the VoF method was enforced.
The flow was driven by a pressure gradient that kept the flowrate
constant over time.

IV. COMPUTATIONAL SCHEME

As concerns the grid resolution, various numerical tests were
performed before reaching the final configuration of the grid (grid
3 in Table II), employing an increasing number of points mainly
along the vertical direction. The results of the numerical tests are
outlined in Table II, in which N x , N y , and N z are the grid node num-
ber in the streamwise, spanwise, and vertical directions, respectively
[recall that xi+ = xi u∗ /ν, u+i = ui /u∗ , u∗ = (τw /ρ)1/2 being the shear
FIG. 3. Computational grid in the generic x–z plane.

Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522 31, 085105-4

Published under license by AIP Publishing
 Physics of Fluids
where zjstr are the stretched point elevations, zj indicates the uni-
form distribution, and P = 1.7 and M = 1.9 are two parameters
characterizing the distribution. The partial derivatives along z were
calculated according to the distribution in Eq. (5). After the insertion
of appropriate initial conditions (an initial velocity profile evolving
with time), the initial transient of the flow was first simulated by
means of the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations
coupled with the k − ω Shear Stress Transport (SST) closure model.42
Then, the RANS steady state was mapped onto the LES domain and
run for 15t (t = 5.4hw /U is the flow-through time) for an appropri-
ate turbulence development. Finally, the LES turbulent steady state
was run for 30t to build up the turbulent-flow database.
A CPU-based computational system was used for the simula-
tions. The system included 1 worker node equipped with 2 eight-
core Intel E5-2640 CPUs (for a total of 16 cores/16 threads at
2.0 GHz), 128 GB RAM at 1899 MHz, and 4 TB of disk space.
The code was parallelized through the public domain OpenMPI
implementation of the standard Message Passing Interface (MPI).
The computational domain was decomposed into 16 subdomains (4
along the spanwise direction and 4 along the vertical direction) with
the Simple Geometric Domain Decomposition (SGDD) technique,
for an appropriate balancing of the computational weight among the
different processors. Concerning the code performance, the simula-
tion was preliminarily run on different machine configurations, and
the results in terms of runtime in executing one full time step (Δt)
of the calculation procedure on grid 3 were reported in Table III
(I/O operations were not included). It can be noted that, for the
total number of grid points used, the execution time decreases, as
expected, with the number of processors involved in the calculations.
As mentioned before, the numerical simulation of the case at hand
was run on the 16-core machine configuration on grid 3 (N tot = 8.4
× 107 , Re = 4.65 × 104 ). The elapsed computational time resulted
in a total of about 1500 h, which is a rather reasonable value for a
relatively complex LES simulation using the worker node depicted
before. In this context, the grid requirements of the present LES
are evaluated in a comparison with those of a hypothetical Direct
Numerical Simulation (DNS). The Kolmogorov spatial microscale η
for open-channel flow
1/4
ν3
η=( ) (6)
ε the upper 5 cm of the water depth because the ADV down-looking
was first estimated using the method of the average dissipation rate
εbulk per unit mass53
τw Lx Ly U u2∗ U
εbulk ≅ ≅ ,
ρhw Lx Ly hw
where Lx and Ly are the actual (dimensional) lengths of the numer-
ical channel along the streamwise and the spanwise directions,
TABLE III. Full-Δt runtime with different machine configurations (seconds per Δt).
CPU cores Simulation (N tot = 8.4 × 107 , Re = 4.65 × 104 )
2 262.50
4 86.42
8 65.38
16 55.00
Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522
Published under license by AIP Publishing
ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf
TABLE IV. Comparison of grid-point requirements between the present LES and a
hypothetical DNS (with uniform grid resolving η along the three coordinate directions).
u∗ (m/s) 0.0239 Experimental value
εbulk (m2 /s3 ) 7.75 × 10− 4 Experimental value
ν = Δx = Δy = Δz (m) 1.89 × 10− 4 Hypothetical DNS
N tot (DNS) 8.5 × 109 Hypothetical DNS
N tot (LES) 8.4 × 107 Present LES
N tot (DNS)/N tot (LES) 101.2 ...
respectively. The results are reported in Table IV. It appears that
the present simulation executed via a hypothetical DNS on a uni-
form grid (able to resolve the Kolmogorov spatial microscale η
along all the three coordinate directions) would require a number
of grid points about 102 times greater than that of the present-work
LES.
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Second-order statistics
For a steady uniform flow over a rough bed, the spatially aver-
aged (SA) total shear stress ⟨τ⟩ resulting from the double-averaged
(DA) Navier-Stokes (DANS) equations (see Refs. 2 and 4) is
d⟨u⟩
⟨τ̄⟩ = −ρ⟨ũw̃⟩ − ρ⟨u′ w′ ⟩ + ρν , (8)
dz
where −ρ⟨ũw̃⟩ is the form-induced shear stress, where the tilde
accent represents the difference between the time averaged veloc-
ity and the corresponding DA value (e.g., ũ = u − ⟨u⟩), −ρ⟨u′ w′ ⟩
the SA Reynolds shear stress and ρν d⟨u⟩/dẑ the SA viscous shear
stress. In Fig. 4, shear stresses from LES and experiment are com-
pared. SA Reynolds stress, form-induced, and viscous shear stress
were made dimensionless dividing by ρu2∗ and expressed as a func-
tion of the nondimensional vertical axis. Both the experimental and
numerical tests show a good agreement with the gravity line, so that
it is guaranteed that the experimental as well as the LES results mir-
ror a uniform-flow condition. Figure 4(a) does not show data in
configuration does not allow capturing velocity signals in the 5 cm
below the emitter. In Fig. 4(b), the turbulent shear stress as well as
the form-induced stress are smooth if compared to the experimental
(7) counterpart, suggesting that the fluctuations exhibited in panel (a)
are an ADV artefact. The total shear stress in panel (b) is in a good
agreement with the gravity line, so guaranteeing the uniform flow
condition also in the LES test.
The form-induced stress can be seen as an indicator to define
the roughness layer, in which the turbulent stress should dominate
over −ρ⟨ũw̃⟩. As shown in Fig. 4, the roughness-layer upper edge is
ẑ < 0.1 in panel (a), while in panel (b), it can be placed at ẑ < 0.2,
where the form-induced stress is not negligible. Hence, above the
pebble crests, the main contribution to the SA total shear stress is
due to the SA turbulent shear stress −ρ⟨u′ w′ ⟩, as suggested by other
authors.54–56 The turbulent stress attains a peak close to the crest
level and shows a damping within the interfacial sublayer (ẑ < 0.1)
in both the experimental and LES tests. In the interfacial sublayer,
31, 085105-5
 Physics of Fluids ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf

FIG. 4. Reynolds shear stress distribu-

tion: (a) experimental data and (b) LES
data. Red squares represent the form-
induced shear stress, green triangles the
Reynolds shear stress, open bullets the
total shear stress, and blue dashed lines
the gravity line.

−ρ⟨u′ w′ ⟩ is compensated by −ρ⟨ũw̃⟩ that approaches its maximum 4/5-law in a fully turbulent flow, based on the statistical theory of
value among the roughness elements, contributing up to 20% to the turbulence.57 Finally, since the simulation showed a good agree-
total shear stress and upholding the works of Giménez-Curto and ment with measurements in all the proposed analyses of first and
Lera,2 Manes, Pokrajac, and McEwan.6 second order moments as well as the turbulent 4/5 law, we can
assert that the LES proposed here can be used to explore the iner-
B. Third-order laws of turbulence tial subrange and smaller scales, according to the grid resolution.
Figure 6 shows ⟨ε⟩ at several vertical elevations (from ẑ = 0 to
In real space, a stringent way to check the existence of the
ẑ = 0.9). This figure provides a more complete view, including posi-
Kolmogorov scaling is to consider the third-order structure func-
tions below which there were no available ADV data, owing to the
tions.57 One of the few exact theorems of turbulence is the Kol-
Taylor hypothesis violation (ẑ < 0.1),30 and positions in which it was
mogorov 4/5-law,58 given by the following equation in compensated
not possible to take measurements (ẑ > 0.68). The ⟨ε⟩ distribution
form:9,10,30
(see Fig. 7) decreases moving away from the source of turbulence,
5
⟨ε⟩ = − ⟨Δu3 ⟩, (9)
4r
where Δu is the double averaged space increment of the stream-
wise velocity and r is the increment vector of magnitude r. As
before, the overbar and the angle brackets identify time and spatial
average, respectively. Equation (9) gives a way to compute directly
the TKE dissipation rate in a turbulent flow. In Fig. 5, a compari-
son between the TKE dissipation rate from LES and experiment is
shown at several vertical dimensionless elevations ẑ. Once again,
the match between simulation and measurements is satisfactory.
Namely, all the compensated laws in Fig. 5 show a plateau in the
inertial subrange, which can be fitted to obtain the TKE dissipation
rate and a sharp decrease going toward the largest scales.9 More-
over, the resolved scales in the LES are smaller than those captured FIG. 6. TKE dissipation rate vs space increment. Five-pointed stars repre-
with the ADV using the LES data, showing the correct simulation sent ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.9), downward-pointing triangles ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.8), upward-pointing
of the inertial subrange that is the only need for the Kolmogorov triangles ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.7), diamonds ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.6), squares ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.5), crosses
⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.4), points ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.3), asterisks ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.2), circles ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.1),
and plus sign ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0).

FIG. 5. TKE dissipation rate vs space increment. Open bullets represent the exper-
imental data, whereas filled bullets are related to LES. Black markers represent
⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.2), blue markers ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.3), green markers ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.4), and red FIG. 7. TKE dissipation rate vs dimensionless elevation. Open bullets represent
markers ⟨ε⟩(ẑ = 0.5). the experimental data, whereas filled bullets are related to the LES data.

Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522 31, 085105-6

Published under license by AIP Publishing
 Physics of Fluids
FIG. 8. Dimensionless mean velocity profiles at different locations in the com-
puting domain: open bullets represent the experimental results and solid line the
numerical ones.
which in this case is the gravel bed. Simultaneously, ⟨ε⟩ shows an
inertial subrange band shrinking close to the water surface. These
facts suggest a damping operated by the water-air interfacial sur-
face, as well visible in Fig. 7. Once again, the comparison between
the experiment and the LES shows a good agreement. Both the
tests present a quite linear trend in logarithmic scale from ẑ = 0 to
ẑ = 0.68, that is, the maximum elevation measured in the flume test.
In this respect, it is important to recall the free surface treatment that
was handled with the VoF technique (instead of a rigid lid). This
resulted to be extremely important in problems of fully turbulent
flow with small relative submergence.
C. Mean velocity profiles
Computed and measured velocity profiles are compared in
Fig. 8, showing a good accordance. Some disagreements are visible
only in the bed proximity. These mismatches are related to the ADV
data because of the undoubted difficulties in measuring inside the
layers influenced by the roughness. A further comparison is given
in Fig. 9, where the streamwise time-averaged velocity-vector distri-
butions along the channel centerline are shown. This view presents
the resolution of the ADV data vs the LES data. The high resolu-
tion ADV measurements are known to suffer from parasitical noise
contributions.31–35,59 This condition made the despiking method
inapplicable. Such a situation may occur when the ADV pulses are
Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522
Published under license by AIP Publishing
ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf
reflected from a bed of complex geometry, as in the case of pebbles
or cobbles.36 Namely, the cause of this kind of noise in a rough-bed
is the overlap of reflected echoes because of the nonregular bed sur-
face. Hence, the missing points observed in Fig. 9(a) are due to the
authors choice of discarding the measurements in which a high level
of noise was registered.9 The highest resolution of the numerical
velocity profiles (Fig. 9) shows a clear recirculation in the bed gaps
(1.4 < x/hw < 1.6) that was also captured by the ADV data. Uphold-
ing the work of Dey and Das,8 in the roughness gaps, a velocity pro-
files inflection is observed, whereas accelerated velocity profiles are
located on the roughness crests. Furthermore, Dey et al.60 imputed
that the velocity profile retard is due to the mixing process in the
wake region of roughness elements. According to literature observa-
tions,8,61,62 the S-shaped velocity profiles appear into the roughness
wake region (see Fig. 9, 1.2 < x/hw < 1.6). Moreover, an inversion of
the velocity direction is visible below the crest levels for ẑ < −0.1.
This behavior is not observed in all the gaps, but it appears only
for gap dimensions comparable to ks . Namely, the roughness wake
vortex, which is the cause of the velocity inversion, needs enough
space to develop. An extensively debated theme in the literature is
the absence of the universal log-law velocity distribution in low rel-
ative submergence flows. According to the Townsend63 hypothesis,
the log-law arises if an overlap layer appears. This layer is character-
ized by the wall distance that should be the only relevant length scale.
The Townsend63 hypothesis is verified if the equilibrium between
the SA TKE production (⟨TKEp ⟩) and dissipation occurs (11),
3/2
⟨(u′2 + v ′2 + w′2 ) ⟩
= ⟨ε⟩. (10)
z − zc
Here, an analysis based on the equilibrium between ⟨TKEp ⟩ and
⟨ε⟩ is proposed in order to validate the absence of the log-law.
Figure 10 does not show an equilibrium layer in which the differ-
ence ⟨TKEp ⟩ − ⟨ε⟩ should be equal to 0. The last analysis upholds
the idea that the low relative submergence does not allow the
defect-law to hold, and, therefore, the overlap layer is also inex-
istent.64,65 Moreover, the influence of the relative submergence on
the occurrence of the log-law distribution was also observed by
Nikora et al.4
D. Flow visualization
An investigation on vortices in the turbulent open channel is
conducted using the database generated by the large-eddy simula-
tion and adopting the following relation:
FIG. 9. Snapshots of vertical mean-
velocity-vector distributions along the
channel centerline: (left panel) experi-
mental; (right) numerical.
31, 085105-7
 Physics of Fluids
FIG. 10. LES results of ⟨TKEp ⟩ − ⟨ε⟩ distribution along the water depth.
⟨ε⟩ = νω2 .
Equation (11) shows that the energy dissipation is also associated
with the vorticity field ω,66 suggesting that the vorticity is connected
to the Richardson energy cascade process. According to Davidson,67
in a turbulent flow, the smallest scale owns a high value of vortic-
ity, which can be seen as a measure of the dissipation energy rate.
Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522
Published under license by AIP Publishing
ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf
This fact can be exploited in order to identify the smallest eddies
from the TKE dissipation rate ⟨ε⟩. As a consequence of Eq. (11), a
new vortex visualization method is proposed. The ω field is plot-
ted as a color map and a vorticity value ω = (⟨ε⟩/ν)1/2 is used to
compute a contour map. Figure 11 shows the contours of the vortic-
ity structure associated with the TKE dissipation rate resulting from
the Kolmogorov 4/5-law. The structures highlighted by the method
must have a dimension contained in the inertial subrange shown in
Fig. 6. As expected, a high population of vortices belonging to the
inertial subrange is visible close to the source of turbulence (pebble
bed). Gradually moving away from the bed, these vortices are less in
number. This is consistent with Figs. 6 and 7 that show a lower value
of ⟨ε⟩ far from the bed.
For further investigation, the simulated flow field was used to
extract the turbulent coherent structures with the Q-criterion.27 This
method is based on the velocity-gradient tensor second invariant
in order to visualize the coherent structures. The structures were
identified through a nonzero threshold value. A criticism of the Q-
criterion is the arbitrariness of the threshold value, which is a free
(11) user choice.68 Namely, the user is not able to set an a priori thresh-
old value of Q to visualize the coherent structures populating the
inertial subrange. Contrariwise, in the proposed method the vor-
ticity contours are directly connected to the energy dissipation rate
value. Namely, once obtained ⟨ε⟩ from the Kolmogorov 4/5-law, it is
possible to compute a unique threshold value capable of visualizing
the vortex contours contained into the inertial subrange. Figure 12 is
FIG. 11. Inertial subrange vortex visual-
ization for different water elevations at
a generic time instant. Colormaps rep-
resent the vorticity field magnitude and
black lines are the contours of the vor-
tices associated with ⟨ε⟩.
31, 085105-8
 Physics of Fluids
FIG. 12. Flow visualization comparison at the ẑ = 0.7 plane, where the abscissa is about 0 < x < 0.2. Contour lines represent the vortices intersecting a plane by using
the proposed method. In subfigure (a), the coherent structures are highlighted through the contour lines rendering, whereas in subfigure (b) the coherent structures were
extracted using the Q-criterion.
a 3D representation of vortices and vortical structures that clarifies
the way in which the latter structures cross the plane, represented
through the contour lines defining the vortices. In Fig. 12(a), the
contour lines are rendered for several contiguous planes in order to
extract the coherent structures. Moreover, in Fig. 12(b), the contour
lines representing the vortices belonging to the inertial subrange
are compared to the three-dimensional structures extracted with
the Q-criterion within a volume that encompasses several planes
slightly above the reference plane. Figure 12(a) shows worm-like
shape coherent structures, which have an intense vortical motion
that is a characteristic of isotropic turbulence.68 This fact confirms
that the visualized structures are compatible with the inertial sub-
range. Figure 12(b) shows a good match between the coherent struc-
tures extracted through the proposed method and the Q-criterion.
All the contours contain a coherent structure passing through the
reference plane. In Fig. 13, the coherent structures (belonging to
the inertial subrange) are visualized across the water depth, reveal-
ing a great population of smaller structures near the bed, which is
the source of the turbulence in the present work. The visualized
structure dimensions grow according to the distance from the bed,
FIG. 13. Flow visualization box in which the coherent structures, extracted through
the proposed method, are shown across the water depth (0 < ẑ < 1), whereas the
streamwise abscissa is 0 < x < 0.2.
Phys. Fluids 31, 085105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5116522
Published under license by AIP Publishing
ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/phf
which is consistent with Fig. 11. Moreover, in Fig. 13, a reduc-
tion in the number of the visualized structures is observed. This
fact is due to the limit dimension given by Eq. (9), which connects
the TKE energy dissipation rate value to a characteristic length.
Namely, the limit dimension of a vortex is the maximum length
which gives a constant value of ε, and once a vortex overcomes the
limit dimension it is no more belonging to the inertial subrange and,
consequently, it is not visualized. This fact suggests that the vortex
reduction observed above ẑ > 0.4 is the result of a vortex stretching
process up to the overcoming of the limit dimension.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
Overall, the LES code used for the simulations in conjunction
with the WALE SGS closure model has shown a rather good abil-
ity in correctly reproducing the turbulent phenomena at hand. It
appears that the present simulation executed via a hypothetical DNS
on a uniform grid (able to resolve the Kolmogorov spatial microscale
η along all the three coordinate directions) would require a number
of grid points about 102 times greater than that of the present-work
LES. The adopted numerical approach guarantees a resolved-scale
resolution that is enough to glimpse into the inertial subrange and
perform the analysis of turbulence proposed here. A first portion
of the present work deals with the testing of the reliability of the
LES calculations with respect to the measured dataset. Once confi-
dent about the convergence of the second-order moment analysis,
as well as the more sensible third-order structures, we used the LES
dataset to compute the TKE dissipation rate (including the small-
est scales of the inertial subrange) that was not captured with the
ADV. Third-order structures clearly show the presence of an inertial
subrange as related to both experimental and numerical results, giv-
ing a way to precisely compute the value of ⟨ε⟩. Moreover, the ADV
down-looking configuration does not allow the measurements in the
upper 5 cm of the water depth. A deviation from the decreasing
trend was observed in the proximity of the water surface. Simulta-
neously, ⟨ε⟩ shows an inertial subrange band shrinking close to the
water surface. These facts suggest the existence of a damping caused
by the water-air interfacial surface. In this respect, it is important to
recall that the free surface treatment has been handled with the VoF
technique. The Townsend hypothesis was used to test the univer-
sal log-law existence. The TKE production and dissipation suggest
that an equilibrium layer does not exist, and, then, the absence of
the universal log-law in flows under low relative submergence con-
dition. Here, a novel flow visualization method based on the TKE
dissipation rate definition is presented. This method is devoted to
31, 085105-9
 Physics of Fluids
visualizing coherent structures belonging to the inertial subrange.
Namely, once computed, the TKE dissipation rate from the Kol-
mogorov 4/5 law, the coherent structures having a vorticity value
linked to ⟨ε⟩ were visualized. As opposed to other criteria, the pro-
posed method gives a precise way to extract the coherent structure
belonging to the inertial subrange. Finally, the coherent structures
extracted through the proposed method were compared with those
coming from the Q-criterion, showing a good match between the
two methods.
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