Turbulent kinetic energy production and flow structures in compressible homogeneous shear flow

Abstract

The production of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and flow structures in compressible homogeneous turbulent shear flow (HTSF) are investigated by using direct numerical simulation. A theoretical analysis suggests that the vertical turbulent transport process should be responsible for the production of TKE in HTSF. It is manifested based on a conditional average method that the pure TKE production becomes increasingly larger in strain regions than in vortex regions of the flow. The velocity-derivative correlation in the shear plane is employed to identify the streaky structures in HTSF, which also tend to occur predominantly in strain regions of turbulence. Localized analyses of conditional averages reveal that the streaky structures in compressible HTSF are closely related to the negative productions of TKE. A comparative study implies that flow compressibility has a considerable effect on the spatial distributions and patterns of the strain- and vortex-dominated fields, which in turn cause the discrepancies in distribution of the TKE production and streaky structures between incompressible and compressible HTSFs.