Studying turbulence using direct numerical simulation: 1987 Center for Turbulence Research NASA Ames/Stanford Summer Programme

Abstract

This paper is an account of a summer programme for the study of the ideas and models of turbulent flows, using the results of direct numerical stimulations of the Navier-Stokes equations. These results had been obtained on the computers and stored as accessible databases at the Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) of NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University. At this first summer programme, some 32 visiting researchers joined those at the CTR to test hypotheses and models in five aspects of turbulence research: turbulence decomposition, bifurcation and chaos; two-point closure (or k-space) modelling; structure of turbulent boundary layers; Reynolds-stress modelling; scalar transport and reacting flows.A number of new results emerged including: computation of space and space-time correlations in isotropic turbulence can be related to each other and modelled in terms of the advection of small scales by large-scale motion; the wall layer in turbulent boundary layers is dominated by shear layers which protrude into the outer layers, and have long lifetimes; some aspects of the ejection mechanism for these layers can be described in terms of the two-dimensional finite-amplitude Navier-Stokes solutions; a self-similar form of the two-point, cross-correlation data of the turbulence in boundary layers (when normalized by the r.m.s. value at the furthest point from the wall) shows how both the blocking of eddies by the wall and straining by the mean shear control the lengthscales; the intercomponent transfer (pressure-strain) is highly localized in space, usually in regions of concentrated vorticity; conditioned pressure gradients are linear in the conditioning of velocity and independent of vorticity in homogeneous shear flow; some features of coherent structures in the boundary layer are similar to experimental measurements of structures in mixing-layers, jets and wakes.The availability of comprehensive velocity and pressure data certainly helps the investigation of concepts and models. But a striking feature of the summer programme was the diversity of interpretation of the same computed velocity fields. There are few signs of any convergence in turbulence research! But with new computational facilities the divergent approaches can at least be related to each other.