We present an extension of the Karman-Howarth theorem to the Lagrangian averaged magnetohydrodynamic (LAMHD-alpha) equations. The scaling laws resulting as a corollary of this theorem are studied in numerical simulations, as well as the scaling of the longitudinal structure function exponents indicative of intermittency. Numerical simulations for a magnetic Prandtl number equal to unity are presented both for freely decaying and for forced two dimensional MHD turbulence, solving directly the MHD equations, and employing the LAMHD-alpha equations at 1/2 and 1/4 resolution. Linear scaling of the third-order structure function with length is observed. The LAMHD-alpha equations also capture the anomalous scaling of the longitudinal structure function exponents up to order 8.
We derive the von Kármán-Howarth equation for a full three dimensional incompressible two-fluid plasma. In the long-time limit and for very large Reynolds numbers we obtain the equivalent of the hydrodynamic "four-fifth" law. This exact law predicts the scaling of the third-order two-point correlation functions, and puts a strong constraint on the plasma turbulent dynamics. Finally, we derive a simple expression for the 4/5 law in terms of third-order structure functions, which is appropriate for comparison with in-situ measurements in the solar wind at different spatial ranges.
A new approach to obtain the closure formulas for the von Kármán--Howarth and Corrsin equations is presented, which is based on the Lagrangian representation of the fluid motion, and on the Liouville theorem associated to the kinematics of a pair of fluid particles. This kinematics, characterized by the finite--scale separation vector, is assumed to be statistically independent from the velocity field. Such assumption is justified by the hypothesis of fully developed turbulence and by the property that this vector varies much more rapidly than the velocity field. This formulation leads to the …
In this paper we investigate whether the features of the non-equilibrium cascade, which have been identified in recent studies using high-fidelity tools, can be captured in the case of the classical dissipation scaling by turbulence closures based on the statistical description of freely decaying isotropic turbulence. Numerical results obtained using the EDQNM model over a very large range of Reynolds numbers (from $Re_λ=50$ up to $Re_λ=10^6$) are analyzed to perform an extensive investigation of the scaling region identified as inertial range in Kolmogorov's theory. It is observed that EDQNM …
In this communication, the closure formulas of von Kármán--Howarth and Corrsin equations are obtained through the Liouville theorem and the hypothesis of homogeneous isotropic incompressible turbulence. Such closures, based on the concept that, in fully developed turbulence, contiguous fluid particles trajectories continuously diverge, are of non--diffusive nature, and express a correlations spatial propagation phenomenon between the several scales which occurs with a propagation speed depending on length scale and velocity standard deviation. These closure formulas coincide with those just ob…
In this work, we calculate the self-similar longitudinal velocity correlation function and the statistical properties of velocity difference using the results of the Lyapunov analysis of the fully developed isotropic homogeneous turbulence just presented by the author in a previous work (arXiv:0911.1463). There, a closure of the von Karman-Howarth equation is proposed and the statistics of velocity difference is determined through a specific analysis of the Fourier-transformed Navier-Stokes equations. The correlation functions correspond to steady-state solutions of the von Karman-Howarth equa…
The von Karman-Howarth equation implies an infinity of invariants corresponding to an infinity of different asymptotic behaviours of the double and triple velocity correlation functions at infinite separations. Given an asymptotic behaviour at infinity for which the Birkhoff-Saffman invariant is not infinite, there are either none, or only one or only two finite invariants. If there are two, one of them is the Loitsyansky invariant and the decay of large eddies cannot be self-similar. We examine the consequences of this infinity of invariants on a particular family of exact solutions of the vo…
We investigate the ability of 4D Particle Tracking Velocimetry measurements at high particle density to explore intermittency and irreversibility in a turbulent swirling flow at various Reynolds numbers. For this, we devise suitable tools to remove the experimental noise, and compute the statistics of both Lagrangian velocity increments and wavelet coefficients of the Lagrangian power (the time derivative of the kinetic energy along a trajectory). We show that the signature of noise is strongest on short trajectories, and results in deviations from the regularity condition at small time scales…
Based on the Karman-Howarth equation in 3D incompressible fluid, a new isotropic turbulence scale evolution equation and its related theory progress. The present results indicate that the energy cascading process has remarkable similarities with the determinisitic construction rules of the isotonic oscillators in quantum mechanics.
Isotropic turbulence is typically studied numerically through the direct numerical simulations (DNS). The DNS flows are described by the Navier-Stokes equation in a 'box', defined through periodic boundary conditions. The DNS flows live in a compact space and they are not isotropic in their large scales. The investigation of important phenomena of isotropic turbulence, such as anomalous scaling, through the DNS is affected by large scale effects. In this work we put isotropic turbulence - or better, the associated formal theory - in a 'box', through imposing periodicity at the level of the cor…
We determine how the differences in the treatment of the subfilter-scale physics affect the properties of the flow for three closely related regularizations of Navier-Stokes. The consequences on the applicability of the regularizations as SGS models are also shown by examining their effects on superfilter-scale properties. Numerical solutions of the Clark-alpha model are compared to two previously employed regularizations, LANS-alpha and Leray-alpha (at Re ~ 3300, Taylor Re ~ 790) and to a DNS. We derive the Karman-Howarth equation for both the Clark-alpha and Leray-alpha models. We confirm on…
From Bifurcations to State-Variable Statistics in Isotropic Turbulence: Internal Structure, Intermittency, and Kolmogorov Scaling via Non-Observable Quasi-PDFs
We present a local approach to the study of scale-to-scale energy transfers in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. This approach is based on performing local averages of the physical fields, which amounts to filtering scales smaller than some parameter $\ell$. A key step in this work is the derivation of a local Kármán-Howarth-Monin relation which provides a local form of Politano and Pouquet's 4/3-law, without any assumption of homogeneity or isotropy. Our approach is exact, non-random, and we show its connection to the usual statistical results of turbulence. Its implementation on data obt…
The normalized non-dimensional von Kármán-Howarth equation for isotropic homogeneous decaying and forced steady turbulence is integrated to obtain expressions for the dissipation rate coefficient $C_ε=(L ε)/< u^2 >^{3/2}$, where $L$ denotes the longitudinal integral length scale, $ε$ the mean dissipation rate and $< u^2 >$ the mean variance of the longitudinal velocity fluctuations. For decaying turbulence the final exact expressions for $C_ε$ for the low and high Reynolds number limit depend on the decay exponent $n$, which is known to depend on the initial velocity structure at the turbulenc…
We analyze the relationship of longitudinal and transverse increment statistics measured in isotropic small-scale turbulence. This is done by means of the theory of Markov processes leading to a phenomenological Fokker-Planck equation for the two increments from which a generalized Karman equation is derived. We discuss in detail the analysis and show that the estimated equation can describe the statistics of the turbulent cascade. A remarkably result is that the main differences between longitudinal and transverse increments can be explained by a simple rescaling-symmetry, namely the cascade …
We explore the spatial-temporal structure functions of Burgers turbulence driven by a temporal Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process, where the characteristic time scale of the OU process is much larger than that of the energy flux across spatial scales. Based on the Kármán-Howarth-Monin equation, we obtain an expression for the third-order spatial-temporal structure function away from the dissipation scale. This expression combines Kolmogorov's exact result of spatial structure function and the exponential temporal decay of the external force. We numerically justify this expression and find that th…
We introduce a novel way to extract information from turbulent datasets by applying an ARMA statistical analysis. Such analysis goes well beyond the analysis of the mean flow and of the fluctuations and links the behavior of the recorded time series to a discrete version of a stochastic differential equation which is able to describe the correlation structure in the dataset. We introduce a new intermittency parameter $Υ$ that measures the difference between the resulting analysis and the Obukhov model of turbulence, the simplest stochastic model reproducing both Richardson law and the Kolmogor…
A model for the Reynolds number dependence of the dimensionless dissipation rate $C_{\varepsilon}$ was derived from the dimensionless Kármán-Howarth equation, resulting in $C_{\varepsilon}=C_{\varepsilon, \infty} + C/R_L + O(1/R_L^2)$, where $R_L$ is the integral scale Reynolds number. The coefficients $C$ and $C_{\varepsilon,\infty}$ arise from asymptotic expansions of the dimensionless second- and third-order structure functions. This theoretical work was supplemented by direct numerical simulations (DNSs) of forced isotropic turbulence for integral scale Reynolds numbers up to $R_L=5875$ ($…
We study the homogeneous turbulence in the presence of a constant average velocity gradient in an infinite fluid domain, with a novel finite-scale Lyapunov analysis, presented in a previous work dealing with the homogeneous isotropic turbulence. Here, the energy spectrum is studied introducing the spherical averaged pair correlation function, whereas the anisotropy caused by the velocity gradient is analyzed using the equation of the two points velocity distribution function which is determined through the Liouville theorem. As a result, we obtain the evolution equation of this velocity correl…
The low wavenumber expansion of the energy spectrum takes the well known form: $ E(k,t) = E_2(t) k^2 + E_4(t) k^4 + ... $, where the coefficients are weighted integrals against the correlation function $C(r,t)$. We show that expressing $E(k,t)$ in terms of the longitudinal correlation function $f(r,t)$ immediately yields $E_2(t)=0$ by cancellation. We verify that the same result is obtained using the correlation function $C(r,t)$, provided only that $f(r,t)$ falls off faster than $r^{-3}$ at large values of $r$. As power-law forms are widely studied for the purpose of establishing bounds, we c…
We apply the weak formalism on the Boussinesq equations, to characterize scaling properties of the mean and the standard deviation of the potential, kinetic and viscous energy flux in very high resolution numerical simulations. The local Bolgiano-Oboukhov length $L_{BO}$ is investigated and it is found that its value may change of an order of magnitude through the domain, in agreement with previous results. We investigate the scale-by-scale averaged terms of the weak equations, which are a generalization of the Karman-Howarth-Monin and Yaglom equations. We have not found the classical Bolgiano…
By analyzing the Karman-Howarth equation for filtered velocity fields in turbulent flows, we show that the two-point correlation between filtered strain-rate and subfilter stress tensors plays a central role in the evolution of filtered-velocity correlation functions. Two-point correlations-based {\it statistical priori tests} thus enable rigorous and physically meaningful studies of turbulence models. Using data from direct numerical simulations of isotropic and channel flow turbulence we show that local eddy viscosity models fail to exhibit the long tails observed in the real subfilter stres…
We define and characterize multi-time Lagrangian structure functions using data stemming from two swirling flows with mean flow and turbulent fluctuations: A Taylor-Green numerical flow, and a von Kármán laboratory experiment. Data is obtained from numerical integration of tracers in the former case, and from three-dimensional particle tracking velocimetry measurements in the latter. Multi-time statistics are shown to decrease the contamination of large scales in the inertial range scaling. A time scale at which contamination from the mean flow becomes dominant is identified, with this scale s…
From the energy balance in wavenumber space expressed by the Lin equation, we derive a new form for the local Karman-Howarth equation for forced isotropic turbulence in real space. This equation is then cast into a dimensionless form, from which a combined analytical and numerical study leads us to deduce a new model for the scale-independent nondimensional dissipation rate $\Ceps$, which takes the form $\Ceps = \Cinf + C_L/R_L$, where the asymptotic value $\Cinf$ can be evaluated from the third-order structure function. This is found to fit the numerical data with $\Cinf = 0.47 \pm 0.01$ and …
We study the Lagrangian velocity and acceleration statistics of light particles (micro-bubbles in water) in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. Micro-bubbles with a diameter of 340 microns and Stokes number from 0.02 to 0.09 are dispersed in a turbulent water tunnel operated at Taylor-Reynolds numbers (Re) ranging from 160 to 265. We reconstruct the bubble trajectories by employing three-dimensional particle tracking velocimetry (PTV). It is found that the probability density functions (PDFs) of the micro-bubble acceleration show a highly non-Gaussian behavior with flatness values in the range 2…
