On determining wall shear stress in spatially developing two-dimensional wall-bounded flows

Journal article, 2014

A full momentum integral-based method for determining wall shear stress is presented. The method is mathematically exact and has the advantage of having no explicit streamwise gradient terms. It is applicable for flows that change rapidly in the streamwise direction and, in particular, to flows with ill-defined outer boundary conditions or when the measurement grid does not extend over the whole boundary layer thickness. The method is applied to two different experimental plane turbulent wall jet data sets for which independent estimates of wall shear stress were known, and the different results compare favorably. Complications owing to experimental limitations and measurement error in determining wall shear stress from the proposed method are presented, and mitigating strategies are described.