Eulerian and Lagrangian renormalization in turbulence theory

Abstract

Systematic renormalized perturbation expansions for turbulence and turbulent convection are constructed which are invariant at each order under random Galilean transformations. Two types of expansion are developed whose lowest truncations give, respectively, the Lagrangian-history direct-interaction approximation and the abridged Lagrangian-history direct-interaction approximation. These approximations previously were derived as heuristic modifications of the Eulerian direct-interaction approximation (Kraichnan 1965). The techniques used involve reversion of primitive perturbation expansions for the generalized velocity field u(x, t/s), defined as the velocity measured at time s in the fluid element which passes through x at time t. The new expansions are illustrated by application to a random linear oscillator, to passive-scalar convection by a random velocity and to the Lagrangian velocity covariance. The lowest term of the expansion for the passive scalar gives Taylor's (1921) exact result for dispersion of fluid elements, and higher terms describe the deviations of the particle-displacement distribution from Gaussian form. In all the applications the assumed underlying statistics are more general than Gaussian statistics, which appear as a special case.