LAUSR

We show that the mean wall-shear stresses in wall-modeled large-eddy simulations (WMLES) of high-speed flows can be off by up to $$\approx 100\%$$≈100% with respect to a DNS benchmark when using the van-Driest-based damping function, i.e., the conventional damping function. Errors in the WMLES-predicted wall-shear stresses are often attributed to the so-called log-layer mismatch, which, albeit also an error in wall-shear stresses $$\tau _\mathrm{w}$$τw, is an error of about $$15\%$$15%. The larger error identified here cannot be removed using the previously developed remedies for the log-layer mismatch. This error may be removed by using the semi-local scaling, i.e., $$l_\nu =\mu /\sqrt{\rho \tau _\mathrm{w}}$$lν=μ/ρτw, in the damping function, where $$\mu $$μ and $$\rho $$ρ are the local mean dynamic viscosity and density, respectively.