Energy fluxes in quasi-equilibrium flows

Abstract

We examine the relation between the absolute equilibrium state of the spectrally truncated Euler equations (TEE) predicted by Kraichnan (1973) to the forced and dissipated flows of the spectrally truncated Navier-Stokes (TNS) equations. In both of these idealized systems a finite number of Fourier modes is kept contained inside a sphere of radius $k_{max}$ but while the first conserves energy in the second energy is injected by a body-force $\bf{f}$ and dissipated by the viscosity $\nu$. For the TNS system stochastically forced with energy injection rate $\mathcal{I}_\mathcal{E}$ we show, using an asymptotic expansion of the Fokker-Planck equation, that in the limit of small $k_{max}\eta$ (where $\eta=(\nu^3/\mathcal{I}_\mathcal{E})^{1/4}$ the Kolmogorov lengthscale) the flow approaches the absolute equilibrium solution of Kraichnan with such an effective "temperature" so that there is a balance between the energy injection and the energy dissipation rate. Numerical simulations verify the predictions of the model for small values of $k_{max}\eta$. For intermediate values of $k_{max}\eta$ a transition from the quasi-equilibrium "thermal" state to Kolmogorov turbulence is observed. If the forcing is applied at small scales and the dissipation acts only at large scales then the equipartition spectrum appears at all scales for all values of $\nu$. In both cases a finite forward or inverse flux is present even for the cases where the flow is close to the equilibrium state solutions. However, unlike the classical turbulence where an energy cascade develops with a mean energy flux that is large compared to its fluctuations, the quasi-equilibrium state has a mean flux of energy that is subdominant to the large flux fluctuations observed.