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The performance of the turbulent drag reduction control techniques at application- level value of Reynolds number Re is an open question, since the methods employed so far in their assessment are limited to low values of Re. The goal of the present work is to understand whether and how turbulence models can predict skin-friction drag reduction induced by wall forcing.
A plane channel flow controlled by a steady streamwise distribution of spanwise velocity is studied via Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations (RANS), by using two different turbulence models. Despite the quantitatively incorrect predictions, both turbulent models achieve a decrease of the skin friction drag. A preliminary analysis of the budget equations for the modelled quantities is used to investigate the process by which the physics of turbulent drag reduction can be captured by a simple RANS turbulence model.