Conditional vorticity budget of coherent and incoherent flow contributions in fully developed homogeneous isotropic turbulence

Abstract

We investigate the conditional vorticity budget of fully developed three-dimensional homogeneous isotropic turbulence with respect to coherent and incoherent flow contributions. The coherent vorticity extraction based on orthogonal wavelets allows to decompose the vorticity field into coherent and incoherent contributions, of which the latter are noise-like. The impact of the vortex structures observed in fully developed turbulence on statistical balance equations is quantified considering the conditional vorticity budget. The connection between the basic structures present in the flow and their statistical implications is thereby assessed. The results are compared to those obtained for large- and small-scale contributions using a Fourier decomposition, which reveals pronounced differences.