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Lagrangian investigations of velocity gradients in compressible turbulence: lifetime of flow-field topologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2019

Nishant Parashar Open the ORCID record for Nishant Parashar [Opens in a new window] ,
Sawan Suman Sinha Open the ORCID record for Sawan Suman Sinha [Opens in a new window]  and
Balaji Srinivasan
Nishant Parashar*
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Mechanics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India
Sawan Suman Sinha
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Mechanics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India
Balaji Srinivasan
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India
*
†Email address for correspondence: nishantparashar14@gmail.com
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Abstract

We perform Lagrangian investigations of the dynamics of velocity gradients in compressible decaying turbulence. Specifically, we examine the evolution of the invariants of the velocity-gradient tensor. We employ well-resolved direct numerical simulations over a range of Mach number along with a Lagrangian particle tracker to examine trajectories of fluid particles in the space of the invariants of the velocity gradient tensor. This allows us to accurately measure the lifetimes of major topologies of compressible turbulence and provide an explanation of why some selective topologies tend to exist longer than the others. Further, the influence of dilatation on the lifetime of various topologies is examined. Finally, we explain why the so-called conditional mean trajectories (CMT) used previously by several researchers fail to predict the lifetime of topologies accurately.

JFM classification

Turbulent Flows: Compressible turbulence Turbulent Flows: Homogeneous turbulence
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 872 , 10 August 2019 , pp. 492 - 514
Copyright
© 2019 Cambridge University Press 

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