Coherent Structures in Wall-Bounded Turbulence

The current knowledge about some particular kinds of coherent structures in the logarithmic and outer layers of wall-bounded turbulent flows is briefly reviewed. It is shown that a lot has been learned about their geometry, flow properties and temporal behaviour. It is also shown that, although the wall-attached structures carry the largest fraction of most flow properties, they are only extreme cases of smaller wall-detached eddies, and that the latter connect with the more classical behaviour of homogeneous turbulence away from walls. Nevertheless, it is argued that little is known about the dynamical origin of these structures, and that a concerned effort is required to quantitatively identify which one (or ones) of the plausible available dynamical models is a better representation of the observed behaviour.