Flight-crash events in turbulence.

ABSTRACT: The statistical properties of turbulence differ in an essential way from those of systems in or near thermal equilibrium because of the flux of energy between vastly different scales at which energy is supplied and at which it is dissipated. We elucidate this difference by studying experimentally and numerically the fluctuations of the energy of a small fluid particle moving in a turbulent fluid. We demonstrate how the fundamental property of detailed balance is broken, so that the probabilities of forward and backward transitions are not equal for turbulence. In physical terms, we found that in a large set of flow configurations, fluid elements decelerate faster than accelerate, a feature known all too well from driving in dense traffic. The statistical signature of rare "flight-crash" ev

SUBMITTER: Xu H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4040622 | biostudies-literature | 2014 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature