High-resolution snapshots of the viscous sublayer from direct numerical simulation of a turbulent boundary layer up to Reθ = 2400

This dataset provides a high-fidelity view of the viscous sublayer in a canonical turbulent boundary layer at Reynolds numbers up to Reθ = 2400. The data were generated by direct numerical simulation using the open-source Incompact3d solver on the UK's ARCHER2 supercomputer.

The core of the dataset is a time series of 16,384 three-dimensional snapshots. Each snapshot contains all three velocity components and pressure (double precision) on a 3482 × 26 × 256 grid, forming a five-dimensional array of shape (16384, 3482, 26, 256, 4). Data are provided in Zarr format to support efficient partial reads, sensible chunking for common access patterns, and on-the-fly compression to minimise data transfer.

Alongside the instantaneous fields, we include pre-computed, time-averaged three-dimensional statistics (mean velocities and Reynolds stresses) and complete metadata covering domain dimensions, time step, and viscosity.

The dataset is intended to support a wide range of uses, including turbulence theory and modelling, experimental design, training or benchmarking data-driven methods, and validation of faster, lower-fidelity simulations. Access instructions and simple Python/Xarray examples are provided in the repository.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Contact point Joseph O'Connor (j.oconnor@epcc.ed.ac.uk)
Dataset privacy Public
Landing Page https://www.turbulencesimulation.com
Creator Joseph O'Connor (EPCC, University of Edinburgh)
Tags turbulent boundary layer,viscous sublayer,direct numerical simulation,Incompact3d,high-resolution snapshots
Publisher Edinburgh International Data Facility (EIDF)
Theme / Category Fluid dynamics
Access rights Open
Conforms To Zarr v3 specification
Documentation Documentation is provided in the repository README, and example Python scripts are included to demonstrate data access and basic analysis/visualisation workflows.
Language English
Other identifiers https://doi.org/10.7488/9644bb83-261d-4bd9-96b2-cddec8c9285a
Provenance This dataset was generated from a direct numerical simulation of a canonical zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer using the Incompact3d solver. Time-resolved velocity and pressure fields were extracted from a near-wall snapshot subdomain and written to disk, together with time-averaged turbulence statistics computed from the simulation. The released files were post-processed into chunked Zarr arrays to enable efficient remote access and partial reads.
Release or publication Date 2025-08-05
Dataset type Zarr v3
the most recent date on which the dataset was changed or modified 2025-08-05
Activity that generated the dataset Direct numerical simulation of a canonical zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer using Incompact3d. Time-resolved near-wall (viscous sublayer) snapshot subdomain fields and time-averaged statistics were extracted and stored as chunked Zarr arrays for remote access.