We study the transition from fluid at rest to turbulence in a rotating water cylinder. We show that the energy, injected at a given height, is transported by inertial wave packets through the fluid volume. These waves propagate at velocities consistent with those calculated from linearized theory, even when they possess large amplitudes. A clear "front" in the temporal evolution of the energy power spectrum is detected, defining a time scale for energy transport at the linear wave speed in the system. Nonlinear energy transfer between modes is governed by a different time scale that can be much longer than the linear one. These observations suggest that the energy distribution and statistics in rotating turbulent fields that are driven by intermittent energy sources may be different from those described by the inverse energy cascade in two-dimensional turbulence.
This movie illustrates the recent numerical and experimental discovery of a new state of turbulence in dilute polymer solutions, Elasto-Inertial Turbulence. Elasto-inertial turbulence is characterized by a chaotic flow state in which both inertial and elastic effects, whose relative contributions vary with the Reynolds number, control the flow dynamics.
This article accompanies the submission of a fluid dynamics video (entry 102248) of inertial cloud droplet clustering in isotropic turbulence for the Gallery of Fluid Motion of the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics.
Using time-resolved measurements of the orientation of rigid inertial fibers in a turbulence-tank, we investigate the autocorrelation of their tumbling rate. The correlation time ($τ_d$) is well predicted by Kolmogorov inertial-range scaling based on the fiber length (L) when the fiber inertia can be neglected. For inertial fibers, we propose a simple model considering fiber inertia (measured by a tumbling Stokes number) and a viscous torque which accurately predicts both the correlation time and the variance of the tumbling rate.
We consider equilibrium statistics for high Reynolds number isotropic turbulence in an incompressible flow driven by steady forcing at the largest scale. Motivated by shell model observations, we develop a similarity theory for the inertial range from clearly stated assumptions. In the right variables, the theory is scaling invariant, but in traditional variables it shows anomalous scaling. We obtain the underlying probability density function, the scaling exponents, and the coefficients for the structure functions. An inertial range length scale also emerges.
We report a new kind of particle clustering caused purely by gravity, discovered in our simulation of particle-laden turbulence. Clustering in a vertical strip pattern forms when strong gravity acts on heavy particles. This phenomenon is explained by the skewness of the flow velocity gradient in the gravitational direction experienced by particles, which causes horizontal convergence of particles.
An extended inertial range dominated by the cross-helicity effects has been studied for forced (statistically steady) and for freely decaying magnetohydrodynamic MHD turbulence (with and without imposed/mean magnetic field) using the spatio-temporal distributed chaos approach. Good agreement with results of direct numerical simulations, laboratory measurements in MHD wind (plasma) tunnel, measurements in the Earth's magnetosheath and in the solar wind has been established. A spontaneous breaking of local reflection (mirror) symmetry has been briefly discussed for the MHD turbulence with zero a…
Complete Hamiltonian formalism is suggested for inertial waves in rotating incompressible fluid. Resonance three-wave interaction processes -- decay instability and confluence of two waves -- are shown to play a key role in the weakly nonlinear dynamics and statistics of inertial waves in the rapid rotation case. Future applications of the Hamiltonian approach in inertial wave theory are investigated and discussed.
We use two related non-stationarity functions as measures of the degree of scale-by-scale non-equilibrium in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The values of these functions indicate significant non-equilibrium at the upper end of the inertial range. Wind tunnel data confirm Lundgren's (2002, 2003) prediction that the two-point separation $r$ where the second and third order structure functions are closest to their Kolmogorov scalings is proportional to the Taylor length scale $λ$, and that both structure functions increasingly distance themselves from their Kolmogorov equilibrium form as $r$ i…
Two dimensional channel flow simulations of FENE-P fluid in the elasto-inertial turbulence regime reveal distinct regimes ranging from chaos to a steady travelling wave which takes the form of an arrowhead structure. This coherent structure provides new insights in the polymer/flow interactions driving EIT, which are observed in a set of controlled numerical experiments and the study of transfer between elastic and turbulent kinetic energy.
We present a spatio-temporal analysis of a statistically stationary rotating turbulence experiment, aiming to extract a signature of inertial waves, and to determine the scales and frequencies at which they can be detected. The analysis uses two-point spatial correlations of the temporal Fourier transform of velocity fields obtained from time-resolved stereoscopic particle image velocimetry measurements in the rotating frame. We quantify the degree of anisotropy of turbulence as a function of frequency and spatial scale. We show that this space-time-dependent anisotropy is well described by th…
We study the rotational dynamics of {\it inertial} disks and rods in three-dimensional, homogeneous isotropic turbulence. In particular, we show how the alignment and the decorrelation time-scales of such spheroids depend, critically, on both the level of inertia and the aspect ratio of these particles. These results illustrate the effect of inertia---which leads to a preferential sampling of the local flow geometry---on the statistics of both disks and rods in a turbulent flow. Our results are important for a variety of natural and industrial settings where the turbulent transport of asymmetr…
Elasto-inertial turbulence is a new state of turbulence found in flows with polymer additives . The dynamics of turbulence generated and controlled by such additives is investigated from the perspective of the coupling between polymer dynamics and flow structures. Direct numerical simulations of channel flow with Reynolds numbers ranging from 1000 to 6000 (based on the bulk and the channel height) are used to study the formation and dynamics of elastic instabilities and their effects on the flow. The resulting mechanism of interactions between polymer dynamics and the flow helps resolve a long…
Rotating turbulence is commonly known for being dominated by geostrophic vortices that are invariant along the rotation axis and undergo inverse cascade. Yet, it has recently been shown to sustain fully three-dimensional states with a downscale energy cascade. In this letter, we investigate the statistical properties of three-dimensional rotating turbulence by the means of direct numerical simulations in a triply periodic box where geostrophic vortices are specifically damped. The resulting turbulent flow is an inertial wave turbulence that verifies the Zakharov-Kolmogorov spectrum derived ana…
We investigate numerically the dynamics and statistics of inertial particles transported by stratified turbulence, in the case of particle density intermediate in the average density profile of the fluid. In these conditions, particles tend to form a thin layer around the corresponding fluid isopycnal. The thickness of the resulting layer is determined by a balance between buoyancy (which attracts the particle to the isopycnal) and inertia (which prevents them from following it exactly). By means of extensive numerical simulations, we explore the parameter space of the system and we find that …
A class of spectral subgrid models based on a self-similar and reversible closure is studied with the aim to minimize the impact of subgrid scales on the inertial range of fully developed turbulence. In this manner, we improve the scale extension where anomalous exponents are measured by roughly one order of magnitude, when compared to direct numerical simulations or to other popular subgrid closures at the same resolution. We found a first indication that intermittency for high order moments is not captured by many of the popular phenomenological models developed so far.
In this paper, we present an experimental investigation of the turbulent saturation of the flow driven by parametric resonance of inertial waves in a rotating fluid. In our set-up, a half-meter wide ellipsoid filled with water is brought to solid body rotation, and then undergoes sustained harmonic modulation of its rotation rate. This triggers the exponential growth of a pair of inertial waves via a mechanism called the libration-driven elliptical instability. Once the saturation of this instability is reached, we observe a turbulent state for which energy is injected into the resonant inerti…
In this paper we investigate both theoretically and numerically the forward in time (FIT) and backward in time (BIT) dispersion of fluid and inertial particle pairs in isotropic turbulence. Fluid particles are known to separate faster BIT than FIT in three-dimensional turbulence, and we find that inertial particles do the same. However, we find that the irreversibility in the inertial particle dispersion is in general much stronger than that for fluid particles. For example, the ratio of the BIT to FIT mean-square separation can be up to an order of magnitude larger for inertial particles than…
We study the statistics of the vertical motion of inertial particles in strongly stratified turbulence. We use Kinematic Simulation (KS) and Rapid Distortion Theory (RDT) to study the mean position and the root mean square (rms) of the position fluctuation in the vertical direction. We vary the strength of the stratification and the particle inertial characteristic time. The stratification is modelled using the Boussinesq equation and solved in the limit of RDT. The validity of the approximations used here requires that$\sqrt{{L}/{g}}<{2π}/{\mathcal{N}}<τ\_η$,where $τ\_η$ is the Kolmogorov tim…
We measure the rotational statistics of neutrally buoyant rods with lengths $2.8 < l/η<72.9 $ in turbulence. For particles with length in the inertial range, we derive a scaling relationship for the mean square rotation rate, $< \dot{p}_i \dot{p}_i > \propto l^{-4/3}$ and show that measurements approach this scaling. Deviations from the proposed scaling are explained as the effect of dissipation range scales. The correlation time of the Lagrangian autocorrelation of rod rotation rate scales as the turn over time of eddies of the size of the rod. Measuring rotational dynamics of single long rod…
We use interface-resolved simulations to study near-wall turbulence modulation by small inertial particles, much denser than the fluid, in dilute/semi-dilute conditions. We considered three bulk solid mass fractions, $Ψ=0.34\%$, $3.37\%$ and $33.7\%$, with only the latter two showing turbulence modulation. The increase of the drag is strong at $Ψ=3.37\%$, but mild in the densest case. Actually, two distinct regimes of turbulence modulation emerge: for smaller mass fractions, the turbulence statistics are weakly affected and the near-wall particle accumulation increases the drag so the flow app…
Turbulence is ubiquitous in nature yet even for the case of ordinary Newtonian fluids like water our understanding of this phenomenon is limited. Many liquids of practical importance however are more complicated (e.g. blood, polymer melts or paints), they exhibit elastic as well as viscous characteristics and the relation between stress and strain is nonlinear. We here demonstrate for a model system of such complex fluids that at high shear rates turbulence is not simply modified as previously believed but it is suppressed and replaced by a new type of disordered motion, elasto-inertial turbul…
Dynamic properties of elasto-inertial turbulence (EIT) are studied in a Taylor-Couette geometry. EIT is a chaotic flow state that develops upon both non-negligible inertia and viscoelasticity. A combination of direct flow visualisation and torque measurement allows to verify the earlier onset of EIT compared to purely inertial instabilities (and inertial turbulence). The scaling of the pseudo-Nusselt number with inertia and elasticity is discussed here for the first time. Variations in the friction coefficient, temporal frequency spectra, and spatial power density spectra highlight that EIT un…
Turbulence generally arises in shear flows if velocities and hence inertial forces are sufficiently large. In striking contrast, viscoelastic fluids can exhibit disordered motion even at vanishing inertia. Intermediate between these cases, a novel state of chaotic motion, `elasto-inertial turbulence' (EIT), has been observed in a narrow Reynolds number interval. We here determine the origin of EIT in experiments and show that characteristic EIT structures can be detected across an unexpectedly wide range of parameters. Close to onset a pattern of chevron shaped streaks emerges in excellent agr…
Recently, the nature of viscoelastic drag-reducing turbulence (DRT), especially maximum drag reduction (MDR) state, has become a focus of controversy. It has long been regarded as polymers-modulated inertial turbulence (IT), but is challenged by the newly proposed concept of elasto-inertial turbulence (EIT). This study is to re-picture DRT in parallel plane channels by introducing dynamics of EIT based on statistical and budget analysis for a series of flow regimes from the onset of DR to EIT. Energy conversion between velocity fluctuations and polymers as well as polymeric pressure redistribu…
In this paper we solve the inviscid inertial wave solutions in a circular pipe or annulus rotating constantly about its axis with moderate angular speed. The solutions are constructed by the so-called helical wave functions. We reveal that the mean velocity profiles must satisfy certain conditions to accommodate the inertial waves at the bulk region away from boundary. These conditions require the axial and azimuthal components of the mean velocity take the shapes of the zeroth and first order Bessel functions of the first kind, respectively. The theory is then verified by data obtained from d…
We report on laboratory experiments of wave-driven rotating turbulence. A set of wavemakers produces inertial-wave beams that interact nonlinearly in the central region of a water tank mounted on a rotating platform. The forcing thus injects energy into inertial waves only. For moderate forcing amplitude, part of the energy of the forced inertial waves is transferred to subharmonic waves, through a standard triadic resonance instability. This first step is broadly in line with the theory of weak turbulence. Surprisingly however, stronger forcing does not lead to an inertial-wave turbulence reg…
The inertial subrange of turbulent scales is commonly reflected by a power law signature in ensemble statistics such as the energy spectrum and structure functions - both in theory and from observations. Despite promising findings on the topic of fractal geometries in turbulence, there is no accepted image for the physical flow features corresponding to this statistical signature in the inertial subrange. The present study uses boundary layer turbulence measurements to evaluate the self-similar geometric properties of velocity isosurfaces and investigate their influence on statistics for the v…
The goal of the present study is: (i) to demonstrate the two-dimensional nature of the elasto-inertial instability in elasto-inertial turbulence (EIT), (ii) to identify the role of the bi-dimensional instability in three-dimensional EIT flows and (iii) to establish the role of the small elastic scales in the mechanism of self-sustained EIT. Direct numerical simulations of FENE-P fluid flows are performed in two- and three-dimensional channels. The Reynolds number is set to $\mathrm{Re}_τ= 85$ which is sub-critical for 2D flows but beyond transition for 3D ones. The polymer properties correspon…
In this paper, we consider the physical mechanism for the clustering of inertial particles in the inertial range of isotropic turbulence. We analyze the exact, but unclosed, equation governing the radial distribution function (RDF) and compare the mechanisms it describes for clustering in the dissipation and inertial ranges. We demonstrate that in the limit ${St_r\ll1}$, where $St_r$ is the Stokes number based on the eddy turnover timescale at separation $r$, the clustering in the inertial range can be understood to be due to the preferential sampling of the coarse-grained fluid velocity gradi…
The effect of turbulence on the mass and heat transfer between small heavy inertial particles (HIP) and an embedding fluid is studied. Two effects are identified. The first effect is due to the relative velocity between the fluid and the particles, and a model for the relative velocity is presented. The second effect is due to the clustering of particles, where the mass transfer rate is inhibited due to the rapid depletion of the consumed species inside the dense particle clusters. This last effect is relevant for large Damkohler numbers and it may totally control the mass transfer rate for Da…
We report the quantitative experimental observation of the weak inertial-wave turbulence regime of rotating turbulence. We produce a statistically steady homogeneous turbulent flow that consists of nonlinearly interacting inertial waves, using rough top and bottom boundaries to prevent the emergence of a geostrophic flow. As the forcing amplitude increases, the temporal spectrum evolves from a discrete set of peaks to a continuous spectrum. Maps of the bicoherence of the velocity field confirm such a gradual transition between discrete wave interactions at weak forcing amplitude, and the regim…
The fate of small particles in turbulent flows depends strongly on the surrounding fluid's velocity gradient properties such as rotation and strain-rates. For non-inertial (fluid) particles, the Restricted Euler model provides a simple, low-dimensional dynamical system representation of Lagrangian evolution of velocity gradients in fluid turbulence, at least for short times. Here we derive a new restricted Euler dynamical system for the velocity gradient evolution of inertial particles such as solid particles in a gas or droplets and bubbles in turbulent liquid flows. The model is derived in t…
We use a coarse-graining approach to prove that inter-scale transfer of kinetic energy in compressible turbulence is dominated by local interactions. Locality here means that interactions between disparate scales decay at least as fast as a power-law function of the scale-disparity ratio. In particular, our results preclude transfer of kinetic energy from large-scales directly to dissipation scales, such as into shocks, in the limit of high Reynolds number turbulence as is commonly believed. The results hold in broad generality, at any Mach number, for any equation of state, and without the re…
The process of the kinetic energy and kinetic helicity transfer over the spectrum in an incompressible, rapidly rotating turbulent flow is considered. An analogue of the Fjortoft theorem for 3D rapidly rotating turbulence is proposed. It is shown that, similar to 2D turbulence, there are two cascades simultaneously: the inverse cascade of the kinetic energy and the direct cascade of the kinetic helicity, which in the case of 2D turbulence corresponds to the cascade of enstrophy. The proposed scenario is in agreement with our earlier calculations, some recent numerical simulations, and physical…
In our recent works we proposed a theory of turbulence in inertial gas flow via the mean field effect of an intermolecular potential. We found that, in inertial flow, turbulence indeed spontaneously develops from a laminar initial condition, just as observed in nature and experiments. However, we also found that density and temperature in our inertial flow model behave unrealistically. The goal of the current work is to demonstrate technical possibility of modeling compressible, turbulent flow at low Mach number where both density and temperature behave in a more realistic fashion. Here we foc…
In this paper we present a novel hydrodynamic experiment using liquid $^4$He. The flow is forced inertially by a canonical oscillating grid using either its normal (He~I) or superfluid (He~II) phase, generating a statistically stationary turbulence. We characterise the turbulent properties of the flow using 2D Lagrangian Particle tracking on hollow glass micro-spheres. As expected for tracer particles, the Voronoï tessellation on particle positions does not show a significant departure from a random Poisson process neither in He~I nor He~II phase. Particles' positions are tracked with high tem…
In this paper, using Pao's conjecture [Y.-H. Pao, Phys. Fluids 11, 1371 (1968)], we derive expressions for the spectra and fluxes of kinetic energy and enstrophy for two-dimensional (2D) forced turbulence that extend beyond the inertial range. In these expressions, the fluxes and the spectra contain additional factors of the exponential form. To validate these model predictions, we perform numerical simulations of 2D turbulence with an external force applied at $k=k_f$ in the intermediate range. The numerical results match with the model predictions, except for the energy and enstrophy fluxes …
We report experimental measurements of inertial waves generated by an oscillating cylinder in a rotating fluid. The two-dimensional wave takes place in a stationary cross-shaped wavepacket. Velocity and vorticity fields in a vertical plane normal to the wavemaker are measured by a corotating Particule Image Velocimetry system. The viscous spreading of the wave beam and the associated decay of the velocity and vorticity envelopes are characterized. They are found in good agreement with the similarity solution of a linear viscous theory, derived under a quasi-parallel assumption similar to the c…
In this paper, we use our recently developed theory for the backward-in-time (BIT) relative dispersion of inertial particles in turbulence (Bragg \emph{et al.}, Phys. Fluids 28, 013305, 2016) to develop the theoretical model by Pan \& Padoan (J. Fluid Mech. 661 73, 2010) for inertial particle relative velocities in isotropic turbulence. We focus on the most difficult regime to model, the dissipation range, and find that the modified Pan \& Padoan model (that uses the BIT dispersion theory) can lead to significantly improved predictions for the relative velocities, when compared with Direct Num…
An analytic model for steady state turbulence is employed to obtain the inertial range power spectrum of compressible turbulence. We assume that for homogeneous turbulence, the timescales controlling the energy injected at a given wavenumber from all smaller wave-numbers, are equal for each spatial component. However, the longitudinal component energy is diverted into compression, so the rate controlling the energy that is transferred to all larger wave-numbers by the turbulent viscosity is reduced. The resulting inertial range is a power law with index -2. Indeed such power spectra were obser…
It is shown that appearance of inertial range of scales, adjacent to distributed chaos range, results in adiabatic invariance of an energy correlation integral for isotropic homogeneous turbulence and for buoyancy driven turbulence (with stable or unstable stratification, including Rayleigh-Taylor mixing zone). Power spectrum of velocity field for distributed chaos dominated by this adiabatic invariant has a stretched exponential form $\propto \exp(-k/k_β)^{3/5}$. Results of recent direct numerical simulations have been used in order to support these conclusions.
The history force is one of the hydrodynamic forces which act on a particle moving through a fluid. It is an integral over the full time history of the particle's motion and significantly complicates the equations of motion (accordingly it is often neglected). We present here a study of the influence of this force on particles moving in a turbulent flow, for a wide range of particle parameters. It is shown that the magnitude of history force can be significant and that it can have a considerable effect on the particles' slip velocity, acceleration, preferential concentration and collision rate…
Using Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS), we examine the effects of Taylor Reynolds number, $R_λ$, and Froude number, $Fr$, on the motion of settling, bidisperse inertial particles in isotropic turbulence. Particle accelerations play a key role in the relative motion of bidisperse particles, and we find that reducing $Fr$ leads to an enhancement of the accelerations, but a suppression of their intermittency. For Stokes numbers $St>1$, the effect of $R_λ$ on the accelerations is enhanced by gravity, since settling causes the particle accelerations to be affected by a larger range of flow scales…
In turbulent flows subject to strong background rotation, the advective mechanisms of turbulence are superseded by the propagation of inertial waves, as the effects of rotation become dominant. While this mechanism has been identified experimentally, the conditions of the transition between the two mechanisms are less clear. We tackle this question experimentally by tracking the turbulent front away from a solid wall where jets enter an otherwise quiescent fluid. Without background rotation, this apparatus generates a turbulent front whose displacement recovers the $z(t)\sim t^{1/2}$ law class…
Two-dimensional statistically stationary isotropic turbulence with an imposed uniform scalar gradient is investigated. Dimensional arguments are presented to predict the inertial range scaling of the turbulent scalar flux spectrum in both the inverse cascade range and the enstrophy cascade range for small and unity Schmidt numbers. The scaling predictions are checked by direct numerical simulations and good agreement is observed.
Effects of quasi-point vortices on the inertial range of scales in homogeneous two-dimensional turbulence (classic and quantum) have been studied using the notion of distributed chaos. Results of direct numerical simulations of decaying turbulence, turbulence with small-scale forcing, and turbulent thermal convection on a sphere as well as results of the Global Atmospheric Sampling Program (GASP) measurements in the tropospheric and stratospheric turbulence over mountainous terrain (the small-scale forcing) have been used for this purpose. The superfluid and Bose-Einstein two-dimensional turbu…
We present a quantitative analysis of the inertial range statistics produced by Entropic Lattice Boltzmann Method (ELBM) in the context of 3d homogeneous and isotropic turbulence. ELBM is a promising mesoscopic model particularly interesting for the study of fully developed turbulent flows because of its intrinsic scalability and its unconditional stability. In the hydrodynamic limit, the ELBM is equivalent to the Navier-Stokes equations with an extra eddy viscosity term [1]. From this macroscopic formulation, we have derived a new hydrodynamical model that can be implemented as a Large-Eddy S…
In this paper we investigate, using theory and Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS), the Forward In Time (FIT) and Backward In Time (BIT) Probability Density Functions (PDFs) of the separation of inertial particle-pairs in isotropic turbulence. In agreement with our earlier study (Bragg et al., Phys. Fluids 28, 013305 (2016)), where we compared the FIT and BIT mean-square separations, we find that inertial particles separate much faster BIT than FIT, with the strength of the irreversibility depending upon the final/initial separation of the particle-pair and their Stokes number $St$. However, we…
We study the transition from laminar flow to fully developed turbulence for an inertially-driven von Karman flow between two counter-rotating large impellers fitted with curved blades over a wide range of Reynolds number (100 - 1 000 000). The transition is driven by the destabilisation of the azimuthal shear-layer, i.e., Kelvin-Helmholtz instability which exhibits travelling/drifting waves, modulated travelling waves and chaos below the emergence of a turbulent spectrum. A local quantity -the energy of the velocity fluctuations at a given point- and a global quantity -the applied torque- are …
We study experimentally the spatial distribution, settling, and interaction of sub-Kolmogorov inertial particles with homogeneous turbulence. Utilizing a zero-mean-flow air turbulence chamber, we drop size-selected solid particles and study their dynamics with particle imaging and tracking velocimetry at multiple resolutions. The carrier flow is simultaneously measured by particle image velocimetry of suspended tracers, allowing the characterization of the interplay between both the dispersed and continuous phases. The turbulence Reynolds number based on the Taylor microscale ranges from $Re_λ…
In turbulence, for neutral or conducting fluids, a large ratio of scales is excited because of the possible occurrence of inverse cascades to large, global scales together with direct cascades to small, dissipative scales, as observed in the atmosphere and oceans, or in the solar environment. In this context, using direct numerical simulations with forcing, we analyze scale dynamics in the presence of magnetic fields with a generalized Ohm's law including a Hall current. The ion inertial length epsilon_H serves as the control parameter at fixed Reynolds number. Both the magnetic and generalize…
Direct numerical simulations of the forced Navier-Stokes equations were performed, in which each shell-averaged quantity evolved from a value appropriate to an initial Gaussian state, to fluctuate about a mean value. Once the transient had passed, mean values (and their associated statistics) were obtained by sampling the evolved time-series at intervals of the order of an eddy-turnover time. This was repeated for a range of Taylor-Reynolds numbers from 10.6 to 335.2. With increasing Reynolds number, our results for energy spectra, transfer spectra and inertial flux supported the Kolmogorov-Ob…
