Redistribution of kinetic energy in turbulent flows

Alain Pumir, Haitao Xu, Guido Boffetta, Gregory Falkovich, Eberhard Bodenschatz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In statistically homogeneous turbulent flows, pressure forces provide the main mechanism to redistribute kinetic energy among fluid elements, without net contribution to the overall energy budget. This holds true in both two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) flows, which show fundamentally different physics. As we demonstrate here, pressure forces act on fluid elements very differently in these two cases. We find in numerical simulations that in 3D pressure forces strongly accelerate the fastest fluid elements, and that in 2D this effect is absent. In 3D turbulence, our findings put forward a mechanism for a possibly singular buildup of energy, and thus may shed new light on the smoothness problem of the solution of the Navier-Stokes equation in 3D.

Original languageEnglish
Article number041006
JournalPhysical Review X
Volume4
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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