English

The diverse nature of small-scale turbulence

Fluid Dynamics 2021-05-06 v1

Abstract

The self-similar Richardson cascade admits two logically possible scenarios of small-scale turbulence at high Reynolds numbers. In the first scenario, eddies' population densities vary as a function of eddies' scales. As a result, one or a few eddy types dominate at small scales, and small-scale turbulence lacks diversity. In the second scenario, eddies' population densities are scale-invariant across the inertial range, resulting in small-scale diversity. That is, there are as many types of eddies at the small scales as at the large scales. In this letter, we measure eddies' population densities in three-dimensional isotropic turbulence and determine the nature of small-scale turbulence. The result shows that eddies' population densities are scale-invariant.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.01809,
  title  = {The diverse nature of small-scale turbulence},
  author = {Ke-Qi Ding and Kun Yang and Xiang Yang and Yi-Peng Shi and Shi-Yi Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.01809},
  year   = {2021}
}