Scale locality of the energy cascade using real space quantities

Abstract

The classical energy cascade in turbulence as described by Richardson and Kolmogorov is predominantly a conjecture relying on the locality of interactions between scales of turbulence. This picture is generally accepted and assumes that energy and enstrophy transfers occur between neighbouring scales of turbulence and that vortex stretching plays a major role in the dynamics of this energy cascade. Direct numerical simulation data for Re_λ ranging from 37 to 1131 is used to gather evidence for the cascade by investigating the energy and enstrophy fluxes between scales and the interplay between vorticity at one scale and strain at an adjacent scale. This is achieved by using a bandpass filter to educe the turbulent structures at various length scales allowing one to determine the fluxes between these scales and to interrogate the role of non-local (in physical-space) vortex stretching. It is shown that the structures of a length scale L mostly transfer their energy to structures of size 0.3L and that most of the enstrophy flux goes from structures of scale L to 0.3L. Furthermore, vortical structures of a length scale L_ω are stretched mostly by straining structures of size 3 to 5L_ω and the stretching by eddies of sizes larger than 10L_ω is negligible. The stretching is dominated by the most extensive principal strain rate of the straining structures. These observations are found to be independent of Re_λ for the range investigated in this study. These results provide strong evidence for the classical view of an energy cascade transferring energy from large to small scales through a hierarchy of steps, each step consisting of the stretching of vortices by somewhat larger structures.