Effects of grid geometry on non-equilibrium dissipation in grid turbulence

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A total of 11 grids in four families, including single- and multi-scale grids, are tested to investigate the development and decay characteristics of grid-generated turbulence. Special attention has been focused on dissipation and non-equilibrium characteristics in the decay region. A wide non-equilibrium region is observed for fractal square grids with three and four iterations. The distributions of the Taylor microscale λ, integral length scale Lu, and dissipation coefficient Cε show that a simple combination of large and small grids does not reproduce elongated non-equilibrium regions as realized by the fractal square grid. On the other hand, a new kind of grid, quasi-fractal grids, in which the region of the smaller fractal elements (N=2–4) of the fractal square grid is replaced by regular grids, successfully reproduce a similar flow field and non-equilibrium nature to that seen in the fractal square grid case. This suggests that the combination of large square grid and inhomogeneously arranged smaller grids produces an elongated non-equilibrium region. The dissipation coefficient Cε is better collapsed using Re0=t0U∞/ν (where t0 is the thickness of the largest grid bar, U∞ the inflow velocity, and ν the kinematic viscosity) as a global/inlet Reynolds number rather than ReM=MU∞/ν (where M is the mesh size) [P. C. Valente and J. C. Vassilicos, “Universal dissipation scaling for non-equilibrium turbulence,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 214503 (2012)].