On the Model of Generation of Vortex Structures in an Isotropic Turbulent Flow

Abstract

It is known that turbulence is characterized by intermittence which is closely related to the development of unsteady nonisotropic intense small-scale vortex structures. In this study, small fluid particles from the inertial range of isotropic turbulence are considered. It is shown that the phenomenon of rotation intensification and stretching of the particles can be analyzed theoretically. In recent experimental and numerical studies, where this phenomenon was called “the pirouette effect”, its significance in the mechanism of the intense small-scale structures generation was discussed. In this study, a linear stochastic Lagrangian model for the effect is developed. In this model, the kinetic equation for the distribution function of the squared cosine of the angle between the vorticity and the eigenvector of the strain rate tensor of a fluid particle is derived and time history asymptotics of this quantity are analytically calculated at large and small times. The results are in good agreement with the recent experiments and numerical calculations. An analysis made in this study shows that the linear processes probably play the crucial role in certain processes in the isotropic turbulence, which is known to be a principally nonlinear phenomenon. The model developed makes it possible to analyze the statistics of the Lagrangian dynamics of small fluid particles in the inertial range which can be useful in some computational approaches to turbulence.