Small-scale universality in fluid turbulence.

ABSTRACT: Turbulent flows in nature and technology possess a range of scales. The largest scales carry the memory of the physical system in which a flow is embedded. One challenge is to unravel the universal statistical properties that all turbulent flows share despite their different large-scale driving mechanisms or their particular flow geometries. In the present work, we study three turbulent flows of systematically increasing complexity. These are homogeneous and isotropic turbulence in a periodic box, turbulent shear flow between two parallel walls, and thermal convection in a closed cylindrical container. They are computed by highly resolved direct numerical simulations of the governing dynamical equations. We use these simulation data to establish two fundamental results: (i) at Reynolds num

SUBMITTER: Schumacher J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4121775 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature