Homogeneous turbulence in the presence of rotation

Abstract

Turbulence in solid-body rotation is generated by a flow of air passing through a rotating cylinder containing a dense honeycomb structure and a turbulence-producing grid. The velocity field is probed downstream of this device by hot-wire probes. Using the statistical quantities characterizing the fluctuating field, we show that the rotation affects mainly the components normal to the rotation axis and that these effects are triggered when the Rossby numbers constructed from macroscopic turbulent quantities, are less than unity. These results are discussed in the framework of other available experimental results on the subject. A theoretical interpretation, chiefly based on spectral analysis, is then proposed to explain the trends of the observations.