Abstract
We study the dissipation range of the turbulent energy spectrum in homogeneous and isotropic turbulence via highly resolved direct numerical simulations for microscale Reynolds numbers between 1 and 100. The simulations resolve scales as small as a tenth of the Kolmogorov scale. We find that the spectrum in this range is essentially exponential for up to about 20, but assumes a more complex form for higher . This shape can be regarded roughly as a superposition of two exponentials where the second exponential, which becomes stronger with increasing , appears to be the result of intermittent interactions with the lower wave-number part of the spectrum; it disappears when these interactive parts are filtered out before computing the spectrum, essentially recovering the initial exponential shape. The multifractal theory accounts for better collapse in a limited range of wave numbers up to Reynolds numbers of 1000 observed with additional simulations at lower resolutions.
1 More- Received 15 June 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.3.082601
©2018 American Physical Society