Motivated by interest in the geometry of high intensity events of turbulent flows, we examine spatial correlation functions of sets where turbulent events are particularly intense. These sets are defined using indicator functions on excursion and iso-value sets. Their geometric scaling properties are analyzed by examining possible power-law decay of their radial correlation function. We apply the analysis to enstrophy, dissipation, and velocity gradient invariants $Q$ and $R$ and their joint spatial distibutions, using data from a direct numerical simulation of isotropic turbulence at ${\rm Re}_λ\approx 430$. While no fractal scaling is found in the inertial range using box-counting in the finite Reynolds number flow considered here, power-law scaling in the inertial range is found in the radial correlation functions. Thus a geometric characterization in terms of these sets' correlation dimension is possible. Strong dependence on the enstrophy and dissipation threshold is found, consistent with multifractal behavior. Nevertheless the lack of scaling of the box-counting analysis precludes direct quantitative comparisons with earlier work based on the multifractal formalism. Surprising trends, such as a lower correlation dimension for strong dissipation events compared to strong enstrophy events, are observed and interpreted in terms of spatial coherence of vortices in the flow. We show that sets defined by joint conditions on strain and enstrophy, and on $Q$ and $R$, also display power law scaling of correlation functions, providing further characterization of the complex spatial structure of these intersection sets.
Using direct numerical simulations of isotropic turbulence in periodic cubes of several sizes, the largest being $8192^3$ yielding a microscale Reynolds number of $1300$, we study the properties of pressure Laplacian to understand differences in the inertial range scaling of enstrophy density and energy dissipation. Even though the pressure Laplacian is the difference between two highly intermittent quantities, it is non-intermittent and essentially follows Kolmogorov scaling, at least for low-order moments. Using this property, we show that the scaling exponents of local averages of dissipati…
The statistics of rotational motion of small, inertialess triaxial ellipsoids are computed along Lagrangian trajectories extracted from direct numerical simulations of homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The particle angular velocity and its components along the three principal axes of the particle are considered, expanding on the results presented by \citet{ChevillardMeneveau13}. The variance of the particle angular velocity, referred to as the particle enstrophy, is found to increase for particles with elongated shapes. This trend is explained by considering the contributions of vorticity and …
Turbulent flows preferentially concentrate inertial particles depending on their stopping time or Stokes number, which can lead to significant spatial variations in the particle concentration. Cascade models are one way to describe this process in statistical terms. Here, we use a direct numerical simulation (DNS) dataset of homogeneous, isotropic turbulence to determine probability distribution functions (PDFs) for cascade multipliers, which determine the ratio by which a property is partitioned into sub-volumes as an eddy is envisioned to decay into smaller eddies. We present a technique for…
An essential ingredient of turbulent flows is the vortex stretching mechanism, which emanates from the non-linear interaction of vorticity and strain-rate tensor and leads to formation of extreme events. We analyze the statistical correlations between vorticity and strain rate by using a massive database generated from very well resolved direct numerical simulations of forced isotropic turbulence in periodic domains. The grid resolution is up to $12288^3$, and the Taylor-scale Reynolds number is in the range $140-1300$. In order to understand the formation and structure of extreme vorticity fl…
A Schur decomposition of the velocity gradient tensor (VGT) for homogeneous, isotropic turbulence (HIT) is undertaken and its physical consequences examined. This decomposition permits the normal parts of the tensor (represented by the eigenvalues) to be separated explicitly from the non-normal effects. Given the restricted {E}uler approximation to the VGT dynamics is written in terms of the isotropic part of the pressure Hessian and the invariants of the characteristic equation of the VGT (in turn expressed in terms of the eigenvalues), the non-normal terms are related to the non-local aspect…
We present the most extensive direct numerical simulations, attempted so far, of statistically steady, homogeneous, isotropic turbulence in two-dimensional fluid films with air-drag-induced friction and with polymer additives. Our study reveals that the polymers (a) reduce the total fluid energy, enstrophy, and palinstrophy, (b) modify the fluid energy spectrum both in inverse- and forward-cascade regimes, (c) reduce small-scale intermittency, (d) suppress regions of large vorticity and strain rate, and (e) stretch in strain-dominated regions. We compare our results with earlier experimental s…
Three-dimensional Voronoi analysis is used to quantify the clustering of inertial particles in homogeneous isotropic turbulence using data from numerics and experiments. We study the clustering behavior at different density ratios and particle response times (i.e. Stokes numbers St). The Probability Density Functions (PDFs) of the Voronoi cell volumes of light and heavy particles show a different behavior from that of randomly distributed particles -i.e. fluid tracers-implying that clustering is present. The standard deviation of the PDF normalized by that of randomly distributed particles is …
Using a Navier-Stokes isotropic turbulent field numerically simulated (Biferale et al., Phys. Fluids (2005)), we show that the probability of having a stretching-tilting larger than twice the local enstrophy is negligible. By using an anisotropic filter in the Fourier space we analyze these survival statistics when the large, the small inertial or the small inertial and dissipation scales are filtered out. The probability that the ratio (|ω \dot U|/|ω|^2) is higher than a given threshold is higher in the unfiltered isotropic field than in the fields where the large scales were filtered out and…
Fully developed homogeneous isotropic turbulence in 2D is fundamentally different from 3D. In 2D, the simultaneous conservation of both energy and enstrophy in the inertial ranges of scales leads to a forward cascade of enstrophy and a reverse cascade of energy. In 3D, helicity, the integral of the scalar product of velocity and vorticity, is also an inviscid flow invariant along with kinetic energy. Unlike enstrophy, however, helicity does not block the cascade of energy to small scales. Energy and helicity are not only globally conserved but also conserved within each non-linear triadic inte…
In order to better understand deviations from equilibrium in turbulent flows, it is meaningful to characterize the dynamics rather than the statistics of turbulence. To this end, the Lyapunov theory provides a useful description of turbulence through the study of the perturbation dynamics. In this work, the Lyapunov spectrum of forced homogeneous isotropic turbulent flows is computed. Using the Lyapunov exponents of a flow at different Reynolds numbers, the scaling of the dimension of the chaotic attractor for a three-dimensional homogeneous isotropic flow (HIT) is obtained for the first time …
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.
We present the first direct-numerical-simulation study of the statistical properties of two-dimensional superfluid turbulence in the Hall-Vinen-Bekharevich-Khalatnikov two-fluid model. We show that both normal-fluid and superfluid energy spectra can exhibit two power-law regimes, the first associated with an inverse cascade of energy and the second with the forward cascade of enstrophy. We quantify the mutual-friction-induced alignment of normal and superfluid velocities by obtaining probability distribution functions of the angle between them and the ratio of their moduli. Our study leads to …
This investigation presents evidence of the relation between the dynamics of intense events in small-scale turbulence and the energy cascade. We use the generalised (Hölder) means to track the temporal evolution of intense events of the enstrophy and the dissipation in direct numerical simulations of isotropic turbulence. We show that these events are modulated by large-scale fluctuations, and that their evolution is consistent with a local multiplicative cascade, as hypothesised by a broad class of intermittency models of turbulence.
We present a methodology to determine the best turbulence closure for an eddy-permitting ocean model through measurement of the error-landscape of the closure's subgrid spectral transfers and flux. We apply this method to 6 different closures for forced-dissipative simulations of the barotropic vorticity equation on a f-plane (2D Navier-Stokes equation). Using a high-resolution benchmark, we compare each closure's model of energy and enstrophy transfer to the actual transfer observed in the benchmark run. The error-landscape norms enable us to both make objective comparisons between the closur…
The turbulence problem at the level of scaling exponents is hard in part because of the multifractal scaling of small scales, which demands that each moment order be treated and understood independently. This conclusion derives from studies of velocity structure functions, energy dissipation, enstrophy density (that is, square of vorticity), etc. However, it is likely that there exist other physically pertinent quantities with uncomplicated structure in the inertial range, potentially resulting in huge simplifications in the turbulence theory. We show that velocity circulation around closed lo…
A numerical study of the $d$-dimensional Eddy Damped Quasi-Normal Markovian equations is performed to investigate the dependence on spatial dimension of homogeneous isotropic fluid turbulence. Relationships between structure functions and energy and transfer spectra are derived for the $d$-dimensional case. Additionally, an equation for the $d$-dimensional enstrophy analogue is derived and related to the velocity derivative skewness. Comparisons are made to recent four dimensional direct numerical simulation results. Measured energy spectra show a magnified bottleneck effect which grows with d…
CEA, CNRS, SPEC, Université Paris-Saclay（法国原子能与替代能源委员会，法国国家科学研究中心，物理、化学与材料科学实验室，巴黎萨克雷大学）；Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University（麦克马斯特大学数学与统计系）；Univ. Lille, CNRS, ONERA, Arts et Metiers ParisTech, Centrale Lille（里尔大学，法国国家科学研究中心，法国航空航天研究院，巴黎国立高等工艺学院，里尔中央理工学院）
An efficient approach for extracting 3D local averages in spherical subdomains is proposed and applied to study the intermittency of small-scale velocity and scalar fields in direct numerical simulations of isotropic turbulence. We focus on the inertial-range scaling exponents of locally averaged energy dissipation rate, enstrophy and scalar dissipation rate corresponding to the mixing of a passive scalar $θ$ in the presence of a uniform mean gradient. The Taylor-scale Reynolds number $R_λ$ goes up to $1300$, and the Schmidt number $Sc$ up to $512$ (albeit at smaller $R_λ$). The intermittency …
We perform two high resolution direct numerical simulations of stratified turbulence for Reynolds number equal to Re~25000 and Froude number respectively of Fr~0.1 and Fr~0.03. The flows are forced at large scale and discretized on an isotropic grid of 2048^3 points. Stratification makes the flow anisotropic and introduces two extra characteristic scales with respect to homogeneous isotropic turbulence: the buoyancy scale, L_B, and the Ozmidov scale, l_{oz}. The former is related to the number of layers that the flow develops in the direction of gravity, the latter is regarded as the scale at …
Hydrodynamic helicity signatures the parity symmetry breaking, chirality, of the flow. Statistical hydrodynamics thus respect chirality, as symmetry breaking and restoration are key to their fundamentals, such as the spectral transfer direction and its mechanism. Homochiral sub-system of three-dimensional (3D) Navier-Stokes isotropic turbulence has been numerically realized with helical representation technique to present inverse energy cascade [Biferale et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., {\bf 108}, 164501 (2012)]. The situation is analogous to 2D turbulence where inverse energy cascade, or more genera…
Statistical characteristics of the Kraichnan direct cascade for two-dimensional hydrodynamic turbulence are numerically studied (with spatial resolution $8192\times 8192$) in the presence of pumping and viscous-like damping. It is shown that quasi-shocks of vorticity and their Fourier partnerships in the form of jets introduce an essential influence in turbulence leading to strong angular dependencies for correlation functions. The energy distribution as a function of modulus $k$ for each angle in the inertial interval has the Kraichnan behavior, $\sim k^{-4}$, and simultaneously a strong depe…
The relevance of two-dimensional three-components (2D3C) flows goes well beyond their occurrence in nature, and a deeper understanding of their dynamics might be also helpful in order to shed further light on the dynamics of pure two-dimenional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) flows and vice versa. The purpose of the present paper is to make a step in this direction through a combination of numerical and analytical work. The analytical part is mainly concerned with the behavior of 2D3C flows in isolation and the connection between the geometry of the nonlinear interactions and the resulting ener…
On the Non-Negativity of Longitudinal Velocity Autocorrelations in Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulence: Kinematic Constraints, Convexity, and Spectral Broadening
Turbulence structure resulting from multi-fluid or multi-species, variable-density isotropic turbulence interaction with a Mach 2 shock is studied using turbulence-resolving shock-capturing simulations and Eulerian (grid) and Lagrangian (particle) methods. The complex roles density play in the modification of turbulence by the shock wave are identified. Statistical analyses of the velocity gradient tensor (VGT) show that the density variations significantly change the turbulence structure and flow topology. Specifically, a stronger symmetrization of the joint probability density function (PDF)…
