Understanding the force on a finite-sized particle immersed in a turbulent boundary layer close to a rough wall is of fundamental importance in predicting particle motion in a variety of industrial and environmental applications. Here we perform fully resolved direct numerical simulations with an immersed boundary method to investigate the forces on a stationary finite-sized particle in wall turbulence over a rough bed. Results show that for the particle sitting on the rough bed, lift is the main contributor to wall-normal force and can be well predicted with proper application of existing force models. The higher lift force is mainly due to the sweep events which temporarily increase the relative velocity as well as local shear magnitude. In contrast, for a particle located slightly away from the rough bed, the wall-normal force is mainly due to the wall-normal component of drag, so ejections and outward interactions are responsible for the increase in the wall-normal force. The standard drag law with near-wall correction can reasonably predict this wall-normal force on the particle, except for the large fluctuations due to self-induced vortex shedding.

• Received 19 January 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.4.094302