In this work, we present an investigation about the sources of dissipation in adiabatic boundary layers of non-ideal compressible fluid flows. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of transitional, zero-pressure gradient boundary layer flows are performed for two fluids characterized by different complexity of the fluid molecules, namely, “air” and siloxane MM. Different sets of thermodynamic free-stream boundary conditions are selected to evaluate the influence of the fluid state on both the frictional loss and the dissipation mechanisms. The thermophysical properties of siloxane MM are calculated with a state-of-the-art equation of state. Results show that the dissipation due to both time-mean strain field, irreversible heat transfer, and turbulent dissipation differs significantly depending on both the molecular complexity of the fluid and its thermodynamic state. The dissipation coefficient calculated from the DNS results is then compared against the one obtained using a reduced-order model (ROM), which solves the two-dimensional boundary layer flow equations for an arbitrary fluid [M. Pini and C. De Servi, “Entropy generation in laminar boundary layers of non-ideal fluid flows,” in 2nd International Seminar on Non-Ideal Compressible Fluid Dynamics for Propulsion and Power (Springer, 2020), pp. 104-117]. Results from both the DNS and the ROM show that low values of the overall dissipation are observed in the case of fluids made of simple molecules, e.g., air, and if the fluid is at a thermodynamic state in the proximity of that of the vapor-liquid critical point.

In this work, we investigate the sources of dissipation in adiabatic boundary layers of non-ideal compressible fluid flows. Direct numerical simulations of transitional, zero-pressure gradient boundary layers are performed with an in-house solver considering two fluids characterized by different complexity of the fluid molecules, namely air and siloxane MM. Different sets of thermodynamic free stream boundary conditions are selected to evaluate the influence of the fluid state on the frictional loss and dissipation mechanisms. The thermo-physical properties of siloxane MM are obtained with a state-of-the-art equation of state. Results show that the dissipation due to both time-mean strain field and irreversible heat transfer, and the turbulent dissipation are significantly affected by both the molecular complexity of the fluid and its thermodynamic state. The dissipation coefficient calculated from the DNS is then compared against the one obtained from a reduced-order boundary layer CFD model [1] which has been extended to treat fluids modeled with arbitrary equations of state [7].