scholarly journals Small-scale dynamics of dense gas compressible homogeneous isotropic turbulence

2017 ◽  
Vol 825 ◽  
pp. 515-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Sciacovelli ◽  
P. Cinnella ◽  
F. Grasso

The present paper investigates the influence of dense gases governed by complex equations of state on the dynamics of homogeneous isotropic turbulence. In particular, we investigate how differences due to the complex thermodynamic behaviour and transport properties affect the small-scale structures, viscous dissipation and enstrophy generation. To this end, we carry out direct numerical simulations of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations supplemented by advanced dense gas constitutive models. The dense gas considered in the study is a heavy fluorocarbon (PP11) that is shown to exhibit an inversion zone (i.e. a region where the fundamental derivative of gas dynamics $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ is negative) in its vapour phase, for pressures and temperatures of the order of magnitude of the critical ones. Simulations are carried out at various initial turbulent Mach numbers and for two different initial thermodynamic states, one immediately outside and the other inside the inversion zone. After investigating the influence of dense gas effects on the time evolution of mean turbulence properties, we focus on the statistical properties of turbulent structures. For that purpose we carry out an analysis in the plane of the second and third invariant of the deviatoric strain-rate tensor. The analysis shows a weakening of compressive structures and an enhancement of expanding ones. Strong expansion regions are found to be mostly populated by non-focal convergence structures typical of strong compression regions, in contrast with the perfect gas that is dominated by eddy-like structures. Additionally, the contribution of non-focal expanding structures to the dilatational dissipation is comparable to that of compressed structures. This is due to the occurrence of steep expansion fronts and possibly of expansion shocklets which contribute to enstrophy generation in strong expansion regions and that counterbalance enstrophy destruction by means of the eddy-like structures.

2016 ◽  
Vol 800 ◽  
pp. 140-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Sciacovelli ◽  
P. Cinnella ◽  
C. Content ◽  
F. Grasso

A detailed numerical study of the influence of dense gas effects on the large-scale dynamics of decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence is carried out by using the van der Waals gas model. More specifically, we focus on dense gases of the Bethe–Zel’dovich–Thompson type, which may exhibit non-classical nonlinearities in the transonic and supersonic flow regimes, under suitable thermodynamic conditions. The simulations are based on the inviscid conservation equations, solved by means of a ninth-order numerical scheme. The simulations rely on the numerical viscosity of the scheme to dissipate energy at the finest scales, while leaving the larger scales mostly unaffected. The results are systematically compared with those obtained for a perfect gas. Dense gas effects are found to have a significant influence on the time evolution of the average and root mean square (r.m.s.) of the thermodynamic properties for flows characterized by sufficiently high initial turbulent Mach numbers (above 0.5), whereas the influence on kinematic properties, such as the kinetic energy and the vorticity, are smaller. However, the flow dilatational behaviour is very different, due to the non-classical variation of the speed of sound in flow regions where the dense gas is characterized by a value of the fundamental derivative of the gas dynamics (a measure of the variation of the speed of sound in isentropic compressions) smaller than one or even negative. The most significant differences between the perfect and the dense gas case are found for the repartition of dilatation levels in the flow field. For the perfect gas, strong compressions occupy a much larger volume fraction than expansion regions, leading to probability distributions of the velocity divergence highly skewed toward negative values. For the dense gas, the volume fractions occupied by strong expansion and compression regions are much more balanced; moreover, strong expansion regions are characterized by sheet-like structures, unlike the perfect gas which exhibits tubular structures. In strong compression regions, where compression shocklets may occur, both the dense and the perfect gas exhibit sheet-like structures. This suggests the possibility that expansion eddy shocklets may appear in the dense gas. This hypothesis is also supported by the fact that, in dense gas, vorticity is created with equal probability in strong compression and expansion regions, whereas for a perfect gas, vorticity is more likely to be created in the strong compression ones.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamad Ibrahim Cheikh ◽  
James Chen ◽  
Mingjun Wei

2018 ◽  
Vol 860 ◽  
pp. 465-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nimish Pujara ◽  
Greg A. Voth ◽  
Evan A. Variano

We examine the dynamics of slender, rigid rods in direct numerical simulation of isotropic turbulence. The focus is on the statistics of three quantities and how they vary as rod length increases from the dissipation range to the inertial range. These quantities are (i) the steady-state rod alignment with respect to the perceived velocity gradients in the surrounding flow, (ii) the rate of rod reorientation (tumbling) and (iii) the rate at which the rod end points move apart (stretching). Under the approximations of slender-body theory, the rod inertia is neglected and rods are modelled as passive particles in the flow that do not affect the fluid velocity field. We find that the average rod alignment changes qualitatively as rod length increases from the dissipation range to the inertial range. While rods in the dissipation range align most strongly with fluid vorticity, rods in the inertial range align most strongly with the most extensional eigenvector of the perceived strain-rate tensor. For rods in the inertial range, we find that the variance of rod stretching and the variance of rod tumbling both scale as $l^{-4/3}$, where $l$ is the rod length. However, when rod dynamics are compared to two-point fluid velocity statistics (structure functions), we see non-monotonic behaviour in the variance of rod tumbling due to the influence of small-scale fluid motions. Additionally, we find that the skewness of rod stretching does not show scale invariance in the inertial range, in contrast to the skewness of longitudinal fluid velocity increments as predicted by Kolmogorov’s $4/5$ law. Finally, we examine the power-law scaling exponents of higher-order moments of rod tumbling and rod stretching for rods with lengths in the inertial range and find that they show anomalous scaling. We compare these scaling exponents to predictions from Kolmogorov’s refined similarity hypotheses.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wojciech W. Grabowski ◽  
Lois Thomas

Abstract. Increase of the spectral width of initially monodisperse population of cloud droplets in homogeneous isotropic turbulence is investigated applying a finite-difference fluid flow model combined with either Eulerian bin microphysics or Lagrangian particle-based scheme. The turbulence is forced applying a variant of the so-called linear forcing method that maintains the mean turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and the TKE partitioning between velocity components. The latter is important for maintaining the quasi-steady forcing of the supersaturation fluctuations that drive the increase of the spectral width. We apply a large computational domain, 643 m3, one of the domains considered in Thomas et al. (2020). The simulations apply 1 m grid length and are in the spirit of the implicit large eddy simulation (ILES), that is, with explicit small-scale dissipation provided by the model numerics. This is in contrast to the scaled-up direct numerical simulation (DNS) applied in Thomas et al. (2020). Two TKE intensities and three different droplet concentrations are considered. Analytic solutions derived in Sardina et al. (2015), valid for the case when the turbulence time scale is much larger than the droplet phase relaxation time scale, are used to guide the comparison between the two microphysics simulation techniques. The Lagrangian approach reproduces the scalings relatively well. Representing the spectral width increase in time is more challenging for the bin microphysics because appropriately high resolution in the bin space is needed. The bin width of 0.5 μm is only sufficient for the lowest droplet concentration, 26 cm−3. For the highest droplet concentration, 650 cm−3, even an order of magnitude smaller bin size is not sufficient. The scalings are not expected to be valid for the lowest droplet concentration and the high TKE case, and the two microphysics schemes represent similar departures. Finally, because the fluid flow is the same for all simulations featuring either low or high TKE, one can compare point-by-point simulation results. Such a comparison shows very close temperature and water vapor point-by-point values across the computational domain, and larger differences between simulated mean droplet radii and spectral width. The latter are explained by fundamental differences in the two simulation methodologies, numerical diffusion in the Eulerian bin approach and relatively small number of Lagrangian particles that are used in the particle-based microphysics.


1991 ◽  
pp. 422-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. R. Hunt ◽  
J. C. H. Fung ◽  
N. A. Malik ◽  
R. J. Perkins ◽  
J. C. Vassilicos ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 803 ◽  
pp. 250-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Peters ◽  
Jonas Boschung ◽  
Michael Gauding ◽  
Jens Henrik Goebbert ◽  
Reginald J. Hill ◽  
...  

The two-point theory of homogeneous isotropic turbulence is extended to source terms appearing in the equations for higher-order structure functions. For this, transport equations for these source terms are derived. We focus on the trace of the resulting equations, which is of particular interest because it is invariant and therefore independent of the coordinate system. In the trace of the even-order source term equation, we discover the higher-order moments of the dissipation distribution, and the individual even-order source term equations contain the higher-order moments of the longitudinal, transverse and mixed dissipation distribution functions. This shows for the first time that dissipation fluctuations, on which most of the phenomenological intermittency models are based, are contained in the Navier–Stokes equations. Noticeably, we also find the volume-averaged dissipation $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}_{r}$ used by Kolmogorov (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 13, 1962, pp. 82–85) in the resulting system of equations, because it is related to dissipation correlations.


2003 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 615-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
RA Antonia ◽  
P Orlandi

Previous reviews of the behavior of passive scalars which are convected and mixed by turbulent flows have focused primarily on the case when the Prandtl number Pr, or more generally, the Schmidt number Sc is around 1. The present review considers the extra effects which arise when Sc differs from 1. It focuses mainly on information obtained from direct numerical simulations of homogeneous isotropic turbulence which either decays or is maintained in steady state. The first case is of interest since it has attracted significant theoretical attention and can be related to decaying turbulence downstream of a grid. Topics covered in the review include spectra and structure functions of the scalar, the topology and isotropy of the small-scale scalar field, as well as the correlation between the fluctuating rate of strain and the scalar dissipation rate. In each case, the emphasis is on the dependence with respect to Sc. There are as yet unexplained differences between results on forced and unforced simulations of homogeneous isotropic turbulence. There are 144 references cited in this review article.


2019 ◽  
Vol 874 ◽  
pp. 952-978 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiying Xiong ◽  
Yue Yang

We extend the vortex-surface field (VSF), whose isosurface is a vortex surface consisting of vortex lines, to identify vortex tubes and sheets in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The VSF at a time instant is constructed by solving a pseudo-transport equation. This equation is convected by a given instantaneous vorticity obtained from direct numerical simulation. In each pseudo-time step, we develop a novel local optimization algorithm to minimize a hybrid VSF constraint, balancing the accuracy and smoothness of VSF solutions. This key improvement makes the numerical construction of VSFs feasible for arbitrarily complex flow fields, as a general flow diagnostic tool. In the visualization of VSF isosurfaces in decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence, the initial curved vortex sheets first evolve into vortex tubes, and then the vortex tubes are stretched and tangled, constituting a complex network. Some vortex tubes exhibit helical geometry, which suggests the important role of vortex twisting in the generation of small-scale structures in energy cascade.


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