The evolution towards the rod-like axisymmetric structure for turbulent stress tensor

Abstract

Modelling the turbulent stress tensor is a main task for both large eddy simulations and methods based on Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations. The turbulent stress is known as the subgrid-scale stress in the former and the Reynolds stress in the latter. In this paper, we examine the observation that the stress tensor tends to evolve towards a rod-like axisymmetric configuration. This observation has been well documented for the subgrid-scale stress. However, for the Reynolds stress, the available data are still too limited to draw a definite conclusion. In the first part of the paper, we show that the tendency is also universal for the Reynolds stress by direct numerical simulations of decaying anisotropic turbulence. To show the universality, it is crucial to examine the decaying process from initial turbulent fields with a wide range of levels of anisotropy. Such initial fields are generated by a novel synthetic turbulence model based on the so-called constrained multi-turnover Lagrangian map. In the second part, we use the direct numerical simulation data to study the dynamical mechanisms of the evolution towards the rod-like structures. Among others, the analyses show that the nonlinear self-interaction term is the driving force of the process, and that the pressure tends to enhance the disk-like axisymmetric structure but overall tends to reduce the anisotropy of the stress tensor. The results shed light on the subtle difference between the pressure and the nonlinear self-interaction terms.