A long pipe facility for detailed high Reynolds number measurements at CICLoPE

The understanding of high Reynolds number turbulence remains a great challenge nowadays. Although recent laboratory xperiments, measurements in planetary boundary layer and direct numerical simulations provide a huge amount of information, none of these data sets provide high Reynolds number, high spatial resolution and well converged statistics at the same time. As a response to this problem, an international effort started some years ago to develop a new research facility allowing high spatial resolution even at high Reynolds number. This facility is currently under design and will be built at the Center for International Cooperation in Long Pipe Experiments (CICLoPE), at the University of Bologna in 2008. The Reynolds number trends of various wall-bounded flows and the challenges in achieving good spatial resolution for measurements is presented and the need for a new facility for collaborative investigations of wall-bounded flows is then discussed together with its basic specifications.