The smallest thermal scales in a turbulent channel flow at Prandtl number

For describing the turbulent heat transfer from a wall to a fluid at low Reynolds (Re < 10000) and low Prandtl numbers (Pr < 20) a direct numerical simulation (DNS) can be used, which describes all the length and time scales of the phenomenon. The object of this paper is to find out the influence of the smallest temperature scales on the largest ones, which are responsible for the macro behavior of the near-wall heat transfer. Simulation, performed at Re = 2650 and Pr = 1, was calculated for velocity field with the DNS accuracy and for three different temperature fields. First temperature field, calculated with the DNS accuracy, was used as a reference to the second and third temperature fields where the highest Fourier coefficients in streamwise and spanwise directions were filtered and damped. It means, that the smallest temperature scales were not described with DNS accuracy anymore. New approach shows that results, for at least first and second order statistics, are comparable to the DNS ones without filtering and damping. (author)