Steady homogeneous turbulence in the presence of an average velocity gradient

Abstract

We study the homogeneous turbulence in the presence of a constant average velocity gradient in an infinite fluid domain, with a novel finite-scale Lyapunov analysis, presented in a previous work dealing with the homogeneous isotropic turbulence. Here, the energy spectrum is studied introducing the spherical averaged pair correlation function, whereas the anisotropy caused by the velocity gradient is analyzed using the equation of the two points velocity distribution function which is determined through the Liouville theorem. As a result, we obtain the evolution equation of this velocity correlation function which is shown to be valid also when the fluid motion is referred with respect to a rotating reference frame. This equation tends to the classical von Kármán–Howarth equation when the average velocity gradient vanishes. We show that, the steady energy spectrum, instead of following the Kolmogorov law κ −5/3, varies as κ −2. Accordingly, the structure function of the longitudinal velocity difference 〈 Δ u r n 〉 ≈ r ζ n exhibits the anomalous scaling ζ n ≈ n/2, and the integral scales of the correlation function are much smaller than those of the isotropic turbulence.