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

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.