IUTAM Symposium on The Physics of Wall

The study of wall-bounded turbulent ows is of considerable interest from both scienti c and practical view points. As such it has attracted a great deal of research over the last 100 years. Much research has concentratedon ows over smooth walls since these are simpler from experimental, numerical and theoretical standpoints. The ow over rough walls has still received considerable attention but progress has necessarilybeenslower.Perhapsthemostessentialproblem(certainlyfromaprac- cal point of view) is to be able to predict the skin-frictiondrag acting on a plate (or a body) given a certain known roughness characteristic of the surface. Unfortunately this has proved to be very dif cult since even the simplest rough surfaces can be characterised by a number of different parameters and we still cannot directly c- nectthese tothe uiddynamicdragin a givensituation.Varioustheoriesandmodels have been proposed in order to make progress but there is still some disagreement in the community as to the correct understanding of these important ows.