Spiral vortices in compressible turbulent flows

Abstract

We extend the spiral vortex solution of Lundgren [Phys. Fluids 25, 2193 (1982)] to compressible turbulent flows with a perfect gas. This model links the dynamical and the spectral properties of incompressible flows, providing a k−5/3 Kolmogorov energy spectrum. In so doing, a compressible spatiotemporal transformation is derived, reducing the dynamics of three-dimensional vortices, stretched by an axisymmetric incompressible strain, into a two-dimensional compressible vortex dynamics. It enables us to write the three-dimensional spectra of the incompressible and compressible square velocities in terms of, respectively, the two-dimensional spectra of the enstrophy and of the square velocity divergence, by the use of a temporal integration. Numerical results are presented from decaying direct simulations performed with 5122 grid points; initially, the rms Mach number is 0.23, with local values up to 0.9, the Reynolds number is 700, and the ratio between compressible and incompressible square velocities is 0.1. A k−5/3 inertial behavior is seen to result from the dynamical evolution for both the compressible and incompressible three-dimensional spectra.