Estimation of characteristic vortex structures in complex flow

Abstract

We present a systematic approach to extract the characteristic vortex region that contains the essential features of a complex flow field. The process involves the analysis of the complex eigenvalues of the velocity gradient tensor. In particular, we propose the analysis using the joint and marginal probability distributions of the complex eigenvalues of the velocity gradient tensor that preserves the sufficient swirling strength and the required orbital compactness of the swirling orbits defining the vortex region. We consider three complex flow scenarios for the application and the assessment of the proposed approach: (i) rotating Rayleigh–Benard convection, (ii) turbulent channel flow, (iii) turbulent flow field in a cylindrical cyclonic separator. While problem (i) is considered for the extraction of subsumed cyclonic structure, problems (ii) and (iii) are reminiscent of wall-bounded turbulent flows, relevant for different industrial applications.