The aim of this paper is to understand the tendency to organization of the turbulence in two-dimensional ideal fluids. We show that nonlinear processes as inverse cascade of the energy and vorticity concentration are essentially determined by trajectory trapping or eddying. The statistics of the trajectories of the vorticity elements is studied using a semianalytic method. The separation of the positive and negative vorticity is due to the attraction produced by a large scale vortex on the small scale vortices of the same sign. More precisely, a large scale velocity is shown to determine average transverse drifts, which have opposite orientations for positive and negative vorticity. They appear in the presence of trapping and lead to energy flow to large scales due to the increase of the circulation of the large vortex. Recent results on drift turbulence evolution in magnetically confined plasmas are discussed in order to underline the idea that there is a link between the inverse cascade and trajectory trapping. The physical mechanisms are different in fluids and plasmas due to the different types of nonlinearities of the two systems, but trajectory trapping has the main role in both cases.
We use the recent frame-indifferent theory of diffusive momentum transport to identify internal barriers in wall-bounded turbulence. Formed by the invariant manifolds of the Laplacian of the velocity field, the barriers block the viscous part of the instantaneous momentum flux in the flow. We employ the level sets of single-trajectory Lagrangian diagnostic tools, the trajectory rotation average and trajectory stretching exponent, to approximate both vortical and internal wall-parallel momentum transport barrier (MTB) interfaces. These interfaces provide frame-indifferent alternatives to classi…
Atmospheric turbulence, especially in the near-surface boundary layer is known to be under-sampled due to the need to capture a wide separation in length and time-scales and limitation in the number of sensors. Over the past decade, the use if Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) technology is approaching ubiquitous proportions for a wide variety of applications, especially with the recent FAA relaxation of flying restrictions. From a geophysical sciences perspective, such technology would allow for sensing of large-scale atmospheric flows, particularly, atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) turbulence,…
We study the statistical properties of helicity in direct numerical simulations of fully developed homogeneous and isotropic turbulence and in a class of turbulence shell models. We consider correlation functions based on combinations of vorticity and velocity increments that are not invariant under mirror symmetry. We also study the scaling properties of high-order structure functions based on the moments of the velocity increments projected on a subset of modes with either positive or negative helicity (chirality). We show that mirror symmetry is recovered at small-scales, i.e., chiral terms…
In ferrofluids the suspended ferromagnetic particles agglomerate due to the interaction between the particle magnetic moment and the external magnetic field, which in turn, influences the turbulence and relaxation time. The relaxation time becomes large when we are considering turbulence drag force instead of viscous drag force in Brownian motion. We investigate that the total energy conservation in ferrofluids taking into interaction between the external magnetic field and the ferrofluid.
Wall turbulence has a sublayer where one-point statistics, e.g., the mean velocity and the variances of some velocity fluctuations, vary logarithmically with the distance from the wall. This logarithmic scaling is found here for two-point statistics or specifically two-point cumulants of those fluctuations by means of experiments in a wind tunnel. As for corresponding statistics of the rate of the energy dissipation, the scaling is found to be not logarithmic. We reproduce these scaling laws with some mathematics and also with a model of energy-containing eddies that are attached to the wall.
Using a recent alternative form of the Kolmogorov-Monin exact relation for fully developed hydrodynamics (HD) turbulence, the incompressible energy cascade rate $\varepsilon$ is computed. Under this current theoretical framework, for three-dimensional (3D) freely decaying homogeneous turbulence, the statistical properties of the fluid velocity (${\bf u}$), vorticity ($\boldsymbol ω= \boldsymbol\nabla \times {\bf u}$) and Lamb vector ($\boldsymbol{\cal L}= \boldsymbol ω\times {\bf u})$ are numerically studied. For different spatial resolutions, the numerical results show that $\varepsilon$ can …
We study the dynamics of a flexible fiber freely moving in a three-dimensional fully-developed turbulent field and present a phenomenological theory to describe the interaction between the fiber elasticity and the turbulent flow. This theory leads to the identification of two distinct regimes of flapping, which we validate against Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) fully resolving the fiber dynamics. The main result of our analysis is the identification of a flapping regime where the fiber, despite its elasticity, is slaved to the turbulent fluctuations. In this regime the fiber can be used to…
The way the increment statistics of turbulent velocity fluctuations scale with the increment size is a centerpiece of turbulence theories. We report data on decaying turbulence in the Max Planck Variable Density Turbulence Tunnel (VDTT), which show an approach of the inertial range statistics toward a nontrivial shape at small scales. By correcting for the contributions of energy decay to the large-scale statistics with a model, we find the scaling exponent of the second-order velocity increment statistics to be independent of the Reynolds number and equal to $0.693\pm0.003$ for $2000\lesssim …
Direct estimation of Lagrangian turbulence statistics is essential for the proper modeling of dispersion and transport in highly obstructed canopy flows. However, Lagrangian flow measurements demand very high rates of data acquisition, resulting in bottlenecks that prevented the estimation of Lagrangian statistics in canopy flows hitherto. We report on a new extension to the 3D Particle Tracking Velocimetry (3D-PTV) method, featuring real-time particle segmentation that outputs centroids and sizes of tracer particles and performed on dedicated hardware during high-speed digital video acquisiti…
Experimental investigation into Lagrangian statistics of droplets in homogeneous isotropic turbulence
New Cornerstone Science Laboratory, Center for Combustion Energy, Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of MoE, Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua University（清华大学能源与动力工程系，燃烧能中心，新Cornerstone科学实验室）；Department of Applied Physics and Science Education, Eindhoven University of Technology（埃因霍温理工大学应用物理与科学教育学系）；Department of Engineering Mechanics, School of Aerospace Engineering, Tsinghua University（清华大学航天航空学院工程力学系）
We analyze velocity fluctuations inside coherent vortices generated as a result of the inverse cascade in the two-dimensional ($2d$) turbulence in a finite box. As we demonstrated in \cite{16KL}, the universal velocity profile, established in \cite{14LBFKL}, corresponds to the passive regime of flow fluctuations. The property enables one to calculate correlation functions of the velocity fluctuations in the universal region. We present results of the calculations that demonstrate a non-trivial scaling of the structure function. In addition the calculations reveal strong anisotropy of the struc…
The orientation of small anisotropic particles settling in a turbulent fluid determines some essential properties of the suspension. We show that the orientation distribution of small heavy spheroids settling through turbulence can be accurately predicted by a simple Gaussian statistical model that takes into account particle inertia and provides a quantitative understanding of the orientation distribution on the problem parameters when fluid inertia is negligible. Our results open the way to a parameterisation of the distribution of ice-crystals in clouds, and potentially leads to an improved…
On their roller coaster ride through turbulence, tracer particles sample the fluctuations of the underlying fields in space and time. Quantitatively relating particle and field statistics remains a fundamental challenge in a large variety of turbulent flows. We quantify how tracer particles sample turbulence by expressing their temporal velocity fluctuations in terms of an effective probabilistic sampling of spatial velocity field fluctuations. To corroborate our theory, we investigate an extensive suite of direct numerical simulations of hydrodynamic turbulence covering a Taylor-scale Reynold…
Particles in turbulence frequently encounter extreme accelerations between extended periods of quiescence. The occurrence of extreme events is closely related to the intermittent spatial distribution of intense flow structures such as vorticity filaments. This mixed history of flow conditions leads to very complex particle statistics with a pronounced scale dependence, which presents one of the major challenges on the way to a non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of turbulence. Here, we introduce the notion of persistent Lagrangian acceleration, quantified by the squared particle acceleration…
Cellular suspensions such as dense bacterial flows exhibit a turbulence-like phase under certain conditions. We study this phenomenon of "active turbulence" statistically by using numerical tools. Following Wensink et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, 14308 (2012)], we model active turbulence by means of a generalized Navier-Stokes equation. Two-point velocity statistics of active turbulence, both in the Eulerian and the Lagrangian frame, is explored. We characterize the scale-dependent features of two-point statistics in this system. Furthermore, we extend this statistical study with me…
The statistics of the deformation and breakup of neutrally buoyant sub-Kolmogorov ellipsoidal drops is investigated via Lagrangian simulations of homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The mean lifetime of a drop is also studied as a function of the initial drop size and the capillary number. A vector model of drop previously introduced by Olbricht, Rallison and Leal [J. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech. $\mathbf{10}$, 291 (1982)] is used to predict the behaviour of the above quantities analytically.
The scaling of acceleration statistics in turbulence is examined by combining data from the literature with new data from well-resolved direct numerical simulations of isotropic turbulence, significantly extending the Reynolds number range. The acceleration variance at higher Reynolds numbers departs from previous predictions based on multifractal models, which characterize Lagrangian intermittency as a naive extension of Eulerian intermittency. The disagreement is even more prominent for higher-order moments of the acceleration. Instead, starting from a known exact relation, we relate the sca…
We investigate experimentally three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic turbulence at scales larger than the forcing scale. We manage to perform a scale separation between the forcing scale and the container size by injecting energy into the fluid using centimetric magnetic particles. We measure the statistics of the fluid velocity field at scales larger than the forcing scale (energy spectra, velocity distributions, and energy flux spectrum). In particular, we show that the large-scale dynamics are in statistical equilibrium and can be described with an effective temperature, although not isolated …
Bose-Einstein condensates with their superfluidity property provide an interesting parallel to classical fluids. Due to the Kolmogorov spectrum of homogeneous turbulence the statistics of the incompressible velocity field is of great interest, but in superfluids obtaining quantities such as the statistics of the velocity field from the macroscopic wavefunction turns out be a complicated task; therefore, most of the work up to now has been numerical in nature. We made use of the Weak Wave Turbulence (WWT) theory, which provides the statistics of the macroscopic wavefunction, to obtain the stati…
Simulations of strongly stratified turbulence often exhibit coherent large-scale structures called vertically sheared horizontal flows (VSHFs). VSHFs emerge in both two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) stratified turbulence with similar vertical structure. The mechanism responsible for VSHF formation is not fully understood. In this work, the formation and equilibration of VSHFs in a 2D Boussinesq model of stratified turbulence is studied using statistical state dynamics (SSD). In SSD, equations of motion are expressed directly in the statistical variables of the turbulent state. Re…
We describe results from particle-in-cell simulations of driven turbulence in collisionless, magnetized, relativistic pair plasma. This physical regime provides a simple setting for investigating the basic properties of kinetic turbulence and is relevant for high-energy astrophysical systems such as pulsar wind nebulae and astrophysical jets. In this paper, we investigate the statistics of turbulent fluctuations in simulations on lattices of up to $1024^3$ cells and containing up to $2 \times 10^{11}$ particles. Due to the absence of a cooling mechanism in our simulations, turbulent energy dis…
