Turbulent/non-turbulent interfaces in equilibrium and non-equilibrium regions in the absence of mean shear

Abstract

Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent fronts evolving into a non-turbulent flow region in the absence of mean shear are generated for both classical (equilibrium) and non-equilibrium turbulence in order to study the characteristics of the turbulent/non-turbulent interface (TNTI) that separates regions of turbulent from non-turbulent (or irrotational) flow. The effects of the non-equilibrium can be observed in a number of statistics computed in the turbulent core region of the turbulent evolving fronts, such as the Reynolds dependance of the normalised dissipation Cɛ, which exhibits a power law (for non-equilibrium turbulence) close to Cɛ∼Reλ−n, where Reλ is the Taylor based Reynolds number and n≈1 is a constant. However the non-equilibrium condition of the turbulent core region does not affect the main characteristics of the TNTI layer bounding this region, which is similar in equilibrium and non-equilibrium turbulence. In particular, the thickness of the TNTI layer is similar in both equilibrium and non-equilibrium turbulence.