RT journal article
T1 Energy transfer and vortex structures: visualizing the incompressible turbulent energy cascade
A1 McKeown, R.
A1 Pumir, A
A1 Rubinstein, S.M.
A1 Brenner, M.P.
A1 Ostilla Monico, Rodolfo
A2 Ingeniería Mecánica y Diseño Industrial
K1 Turbulence
K1 Direct numerical simulations
K1 Vortex tubes
K1 Homogeneous isotropic turbulence
AB The transfer of kinetic energy from large to small scales is a hallmark of turbulent flows. Yet, aprecise mechanistic description of this transfer, which is expected to occur via an energy cascade, isstill missing. Several conceptually simple configurations with vortex tubes have been proposed as atesting ground to understand the energy cascade. Here, we focus on incompressible flows andcompare the energy transfer occurring in a statistically steady homogeneous isotropic turbulent(HIT) flow with the generation of fine-scale motions in configurations involving vortex tubes. Westart by filtering the velocity field in bands of wavenumbers distributed logarithmically, whichallows us to study energy transfer in Fourier space and also visualize the energy cascade in realspace. In the case of a statistically steady HIT flow at a moderate Reynolds number, our numericalresults do not reveal any significant correlation between regions of intense energy transfers andvorticity or strain, filtered in corresponding wavenumber bands, nor any simple self-similarprocess. In comparison, in the transient turbulent flow obtained from the interaction between twoantiparallel vortex tubes, we observe a qualitatively simpler organization of the intense structures,as well as of the energy transfer. However, the correlations between energy transfer and strain aresmall, and point to complicated dynamics of energy transfer. By imposing a structure at large scalesconsisting of antiparallel vortex tubes in a statistically steady flow, we observed a picturequalitatively similar to what was observed for the transient flow, but the energy transfer statisticsdo not reproduce the type of triadic interactions seen in HIT. These results indicate that thespecific properties of the large-scale vortical structures affect the way energy is transferred, andmay not be fully representative of HIT.
PB Institute of Physics
SN 1367-2630
YR 2023
FD 2023
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/31819
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/31819
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 10-may-2026