Experimental evidence of accelerated energy transfer in turbulence

Abstract

We investigate the vorticity dynamics in a turbulent vortex using scattering of acoustic waves. Two ultrasonic beams are adjusted to probe simultaneously two spatial scales in a given volume of the flow, thus allowing a dual channel recording of the dynamics of coherent vorticity structures. Our results show that this allows one to measure the average energy transfer time between different spatial length scales, and that such transfer goes faster at smaller scales.