Decaying quasi-two-dimensional turbulence in a thin liquid layer

The results of laboratory measurements of decaying quasi-two-dimensional turbulence in a thin liquid layer are considered. It is shown that the enstrophy-to-energy ratio decreases according to a power law on a certain decay interval. The exponent in the power law is a function of the Reynolds number. The enstrophy decay is found to be anomalously slow as predicted in a number of numerical studies. It is shown that the anomalous decay in the quasi-two-dimensional flow under investigation is not due to intense vortex formation as in the numerical decaying turbulence, but due to the limited range of scales on which a flow can be regarded as two-dimensional.     

Decaying turbulence in the presence of a shearless uniform kinetic energy gradient

The decay of turbulent kinetic energy in nearly isotropic grid turbulence has been studied extensively as a fundamental point of reference for turbulence theories and numerical simulations. Most studies have focused on nearly homogeneous turbulence characterised by power-law decay. Other studies have focused on so-called shearless mixing layers, in which two regions with the same mean velocity but distinctly different kinetic energy levels slowly diffuse into each other downstream thus providing information about spatial transport of turbulence. Here, we introduce and study another type of shearless turbulent flow. It has initially a nearly uniform spatial gradient of kinetic energy of the form k ～ β(y ? y₀), where y is the spanwise position. In the experiments, this gradient is generated with the use of an active grid and screens mounted upstream of the wind-tunnel’s test section, iteratively designed to produce a uniform gradient of turbulent kinetic energy without mean velocity shear. Data are acquired using X-wire thermal anemometry at different spanwise and downstream locations. Profile measurements are used to quantify the constancy of the mean velocity and the linearity of the initial profile of kinetic energy. Measurements show that at all spanwise locations, the decay in the streamwise direction follows a power-law but with exponents n(y) that depend upon the spanwise location. The results are consistent with a decay of the form k/?u?² = β(x/x_ref)^?n(y)(y ? y₀)/M. Results for the development of integral length scale, and for velocity skewness and flatness factors are also presented. Significant deviations from Gaussianity are observed especially for the spanwise velocity component in the lower kinetic energy region. Future experiments will be needed including measurements of the dissipation rate ? at sufficient accuracy, in order to unambiguously partition the energy decay into dissipation and spatial diffusion.     

Vortex statistics for turbulence in a container with rigid boundaries

The evolution of vortex statistics for decaying two-dimensional turbulence in a square container with rigid no-slip walls is compared with a few available experimental results and with the scaling theory of two-dimensional turbulent decay as proposed by Carnevale et al. Power-law exponents, computed from an ensemble average of several numerical runs, coincide with some experimentally obtained values, but not with data obtained from numerical simulations of decaying two-dimensional turbulence with periodic boundary conditions.     

Surface waves in a vertically excited circular cylindrical container

The nonlinear free surface amplitude equation, which has been derived from the inviscid fluid by solving the potential equation of water waves with a singular perturbation theory in a vertically oscillating rigid circular cylinder, is investigated successively in the fourth-order Runge－Kutta approach with an equivalent time-step. Computational results include the evolution of the amplitude with time, the characteristics of phase plane determined by the real and imaginary parts of the amplitude, the single-mode selection rules of the surface waves in different forced frequencies, contours of free surface displacement and corresponding three-dimensional evolution of surface waves, etc. In addition, the comparison of the surface wave modes is made between theoretical calculations and experimental measurements, and the results are reasonable although there are some differences in the forced frequency.     

Structure functions in two-dimensional turbulence

The “variable range decomposition” mean field type approximation is applied to the enstrophy and energy balance equations in 2D homogeneous, isotropic turbulence. Enstrophy is seen to be transferred to smaller scales, energy to larger scales. The approximate enstrophy balance equation is supplemented by an exact relation between the velocity structure functionD(r) and the vorticity structure functionD _ω(r) to form a closed set of equations that is used to calculateD andD _ω from scale zero up to the input scale.D _ω is found to depend only on viscosity and the enstrophy dissipation ε_ω and tends to the constant ≈15ε _ω ^2/3 in the enstrophy inertial range.D(r) in addition to the well-knownr ²-law has a second power law term ∝r ^4/3, which is important in the intermediate range between the viscous range and the enstrophy inertial range. All numerical constants are calculated.     

Topology of two-dimensional turbulence

Velocity differences in the direct enstrophy cascade of two-dimensional turbulence are correlated with the underlying flow topology. The statistics of the transverse and longitudinal velocity differences are found to be governed by different structures. The wings of the transverse distribution are dominated by strong vortex centers, whereas the tails of the longitudinal differences are dominated by saddles. Viewed in the framework of earlier theoretical work, this result suggests that the transfer of enstrophy to smaller scales is accomplished in regions of the flow dominated by saddles.     

External dissipation in driven two-dimensional turbulence

Turbulence in a freely suspended soap film is created by electromagnetic forcing and measured by particle tracking. The velocity fluctuations are shown to be adequately described by the forced Navier-Stokes equation for an incompressible two-dimensional fluid with a linear drag term to model the frictional coupling to the surrounding air. Using this equation, the energy dissipation rates due to air friction and the film's internal viscosity are measured, as is the rate of energy injection from the electromagnetic forcing. Comparison of these rates demonstrates that the air friction is a significant energy dissipation mechanism in the system.     

Logarithmic correlation functions in two-dimensional turbulence

We consider the correlation functions of two-dimensional turbulence in the presence and absence of a three-dimensional perturbation, by means of conformal field theory. In the presence of three-dimensional perturbation, we show that in the strong coupling limit of a small scale random force, there is some logarithmic factor in the correlation functions of velocity stream functions. We show that the logarithmic conformal field theory c_8,1 describes the 2D-turbulence both in the absence and in the presence of the perturbation. We obtain the energy spectrum E(k) ∼ k^−5.125 ln(k) for perturbed 2D-turbulence and E(k) ∼ k⁻⁵ ln(k) for unperturbed turbulence. Recent numerical simulation and experimental results confirm our prediction.     

Dynamic multiscaling in two-dimensional fluid turbulence

We obtain, by extensive direct numerical simulations, time-dependent and equal-time structure functions for the vorticity, in both quasi-Lagrangian and Eulerian frames, for the direct-cascade regime in two-dimensional fluid turbulence with air-drag-induced friction. We show that different ways of extracting time scales from these time-dependent structure functions lead to different dynamic-multiscaling exponents, which are related to equal-time multiscaling exponents by different classes of bridge relations; for a representative value of the friction we verify that, given our error bars, these bridge relations hold.     

Persistence problem in two-dimensional fluid turbulence

We present a natural framework for studying the persistence problem in two-dimensional fluid turbulence by using the Okubo-Weiss parameter Λ to distinguish between vortical and extensional regions. We then use a direct numerical simulation 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 θ=2.9±0.2.     

Conformation statistics of a deformable material line in two-dimensional turbulence

We have observed the fluctuations of the centerline position of a thin column of water injected into a turbulent soap film. As the turbulence intensity increases, the second order structure function of the centerline position increments undergoes a change between different power law scaling regimes. These scalings indicate that the centerline position makes a continuous transition from an analytic to a non-analytic function. Cusps and other singular configurations of the column occur at higher turbulent intensities. Since the column supports random wave patterns, we propose that this experiment could serve as a test bed for theories of wave turbulence in one dimension.     

Dynamics of energy condensation in two-dimensional turbulence

We report a numerical study, supplemented by phenomenological explanations, of "energy condensation" in forced 2D turbulence in a biperiodic box. Condensation is a finite size effect which occurs after the standard inverse cascade reaches the size of the system. It leads to the emergence of a coherent vortex dipole. We show that the time growth of the dipole is self-similar, and it contains most of the injected energy, thus resulting in an energy spectrum which is markedly steeper than the standard k{-5/3} one. Once the coherent component is subtracted, however, the remaining fluctuations have a spectrum close to k{-1}. The fluctuations decay slowly as the coherent part grows.     

On one-eighth law in unforced two-dimensional turbulence

We critically revisit the various attempts to prove one-eighth law in two-dimensional (2D) turbulence and reconcile them. Herein, the one-eighth law has been proved for unforced 2D incompressible high Reynolds number turbulence. An exact expression of the time derivative of two-point second order velocity correlation function is also derived for the enstrophy cascade dominated regime.