SHORT COMMUNICATION Tie Wei Rodney Schmidt Patrick McMurtry Comment on the Clauser chart method for determining the friction velocity Received: 26 May 2004 / Revised: 8 November 2004 / Accepted: 13 January 2005 / Published online: 6 April 2005 Ó Springer-Verlag 2005 Abstract A known difficulty with using the Clauser chart method to determine the friction velocity in wall bounded flows is that it assumes, a priori, a logarithmic law for the mean velocity profile. Using both experi- mental and DNS data in the literature, this note explicitly shows how friction velocities obtained using the Clauser chart method can potentially mask subtle Reynolds-number-dependent behavior. 1 Introduction In the experimental study of turbulent boundary layers, the determination of the friction velocity u s , defined as ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi s w =q p ; is critical, since most of the scaling laws for the turbulent boundary layer involve u s . Unfortunately, data that come from direct measurement of the wall shear stress are not always available, requiring the use of indirect methods to deduce the wall shear stress. Although a number of indirect techniques are available for determining u s , none are universally accepted. Boundary layer experimentalists commonly use the Clauser chart method (Fernholz and Finley 1996), which assumes a logarithmic law for the mean velocity profile 1 . Problems with using the Clauser chart approach to determine the friction velocity are recognized by many researchers. George and Castillo (1997), for example, showed clear discrepancies between mean velocity profiles scaled using direct measurements of u s and approximations using the Clauser method. However, a clear explicit discussion of its shortcomings and the implications for masking Reynolds number dependen- cies is not found in the literature. The purpose of this note is to explicitly illustrate, using manufactured data, DNS data, and experimental data, how data scaled using u s obtained from the Clauser chart method can contaminate the data in such a way as to mask subtle Reynolds-number-dependent behavior in the near-wall region. 2 The Clauser chart method In the Clauser chart method (Clauser 1956), the friction velocity is extrapolated from direct measurements of the free stream velocity U ¥ and the mean velocity profile U(y), where y is the normal distance from the wall. The method is based on the assumption that the velocity profile follows a universal logarithmic form in the overlap region of the boundary layer: Uy ðÞ u s ¼ 1 j ln yu s m  þ B ð1Þ and that the constants j and B are independent of the Reynolds number. If we multiply both sides of Eq. 1 by u s /U ¥ , we obtain: Uy ðÞ U 1 ¼ 1 j us U 1   ln yU 1 m  þ 1 j u s U 1 ln u s U 1  þ B u s U 1   ð2Þ Noting that the coefficient of friction C f is defined as 2(u s /U ¥ ) 2 , the Clauser chart equation can be written in the following form: Uy ðÞ U 1 ¼ 1 j ffiffiffiffiffi C f 2 r " # ln yU 1 m  þ 1 j ffiffiffiffiffi C f 2 r ln ffiffiffiffiffi C f 2 r ! þ B ffiffiffiffiffi C f 2 r " # ð3Þ T. Wei (&) P. McMurtry Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA E-mail: wei@eng.utah.edu R. Schmidt Computational Sciences Department 9233, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185, USA 1 This paper is not intended to discuss the validity of the log-law, which has been debated widely by, among others, George and Castillo (1997), Barenbaltt and Chorin (1998), and Zagarola et al. (1997). Experiments in Fluids (2005) 38: 695–699 DOI 10.1007/s00348-005-0934-3