No Arabic abstract
We numerically investigate the spatial and temporal statistical properties of a dilute polymer solution in the elastic turbulence regime, i.e., in the chaotic flow state occurring at vanishing Reynolds and high Weissenberg numbers. We aim at elucidating the relations between measurements of flow properties performed in the spatial domain with the ones taken in the temporal domain, which is a key point for the interpretation of experimental results on elastic turbulence and to discuss the validity of Taylors hypothesis. To this end, we carry out extensive direct numerical simulations of the two-dimensional Kolmogorov flow of an Oldroyd-B viscoelastic fluid. Static point-like numerical probes are placed at different locations in the flow, particularly at the extrema of mean flow amplitude. The results in the fully developed elastic turbulence regime reveal large velocity fluctuations, as compared to the mean flow, leading to a partial breakdown of Taylors frozen-field hypothesis. While second-order statistics, probed by spectra and structure functions, display consistent scaling behaviors in the spatial and temporal domains, the third-order statistics highlight robust differences. In particular the temporal analysis fails to capture the skewness of streamwise longitudinal velocity increments. Finally, we assess both the degree of statistical inhomogeneity and isotropy of the flow turbulent fluctuations as a function of scale. While the system is only weakly non-homogenous in the cross-stream direction, it is found to be highly anisotropic at all scales.
We report the onset of elastic turbulence in a two-dimensional Taylor-Couette geometry using numerical solutions of the Oldroyd-B model, also performed at high Weissenberg numbers with the program OpenFOAM. Beyond a critical Weissenberg number, an elastic instability causes a supercritical transition from the laminar Taylor-Couette to a turbulent flow. The order parameter, the time average of secondary-flow strength, follows the scaling law $Phi propto (mathrm{Wi} -mathrm{Wi}_c)^{gamma}$ with $mathrm{Wi}_c=10$ and $gamma = 0.45$. The power spectrum of the velocity fluctuations shows a power-law decay with a characteristic exponent, which strongly depends on the radial position. It is greater than two, which we relate to the dimension of the geometry.
We obtain, by extensive direct numerical simulations, trajectories of heavy inertial particles in two-dimensional, statistically steady, homogeneous, and isotropic turbulent flows, with friction. We show that the probability distribution function $mathcal{P}(kappa)$, of the trajectory curvature $kappa$, is such that, as $kappa to infty$, $mathcal{P}(kappa) sim kappa^{-h_{rm r}}$, with $h_{rm r} = 2.07 pm 0.09$. The exponent $h_{rm r}$ is universal, insofar as it is independent of the Stokes number ($rm{St}$) and the energy-injection wave number. We show that this exponent lies within error bars of their counterparts for trajectories of Lagrangian tracers. We demonstrate that the complexity of heavy-particle trajectories can be characterized by the number $N_{rm I}(t,{rm St})$ of inflection points (up until time $t$) in the trajectory and $n_{rm I} ({rm St}) equiv lim_{ttoinfty} frac{N_{rm I} (t,{rm St})}{t} sim {rm St}^{-Delta}$, where the exponent $Delta = 0.33 pm0.02$ is also universal.
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. Restriction to 2D turbulence makes available an analytically and computationally attractive implementation of SSD referred to as S3T, in which the SSD is expressed by coupling the equation for the horizontal mean structure with the equation for the ensemble mean perturbation covariance. This second order SSD produces accurate statistics, through second order, when compared with fully nonlinear simulations. In particular, S3T captures the spontaneous emergence of the VSHF and associated density layers seen in simulations of turbulence maintained by homogeneous large-scale stochastic excitation. An advantage of the S3T system is that the VSHF formation mechanism, which is wave-mean flow interaction between the emergent VSHF and the stochastically excited large-scale gravity waves, is analytically understood in the S3T system. Comparison with fully nonlinear simulations verifies that S3T solutions accurately predict the scale selection, dependence on stochastic excitation strength, and nonlinear equilibrium structure of the VSHF. These results facilitate relating VSHF theory and geophysical examples of turbulent jets such as the oceans equatorial deep jets.
The strength of the nonlinearity is measured in decaying two-dimensional turbulence, by comparing its value to that found in a Gaussian field. It is shown how the nonlinearity drops following a two-step process. First a fast relaxation is observed on a timescale comparable to the time of for-mation of vortical structures, then at long times the nonlinearity relaxes further during the phase when the eddies merge to form the final dynamic state of decay. Both processes seem roughly independent of the value of the Reynolds number.
We present a natural framework for studying the persistence problem in two-dimensional fluid turbulence by using the Okubo-Weiss parameter $Lambda$ to distinguish between vortical and extensional regions. We then use a direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the two-dimensional, incompressible Navier--Stokes equation with Ekman friction to study probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the persistence times of vortical and extensional regions by employing both Eulerian and Lagrangian measurements. We find that, in the Eulerian case, the persistence-time PDFs have exponential tails; by contrast, this PDF for Lagrangian particles, in vortical regions, has a power-law tail with an exponent $theta=2.9pm0.2$.