Turbulent/turbulent interfacial layers of a shearless turbulence mixing layer in temporally evolving grid turbulence

Abstract

Turbulent/turbulent interfacial (TTI) layers are investigated with direct numerical simulation of temporally evolving grid turbulence. The present study considers a temporally evolving wake of two parallel-bar grids with different mesh sizes, which generate homogeneous isotropic turbulent regions with large and small turbulent kinetic energies (TKE). A shearless mixing layer of turbulence forms between the large- and small-TKE regions. The TTI layer bounded by the large- or small-TKE region is identified with a passive scalar field, and the flow statistics are evaluated as functions of a position with respect to the TTI layer. Statistics of a velocity gradient tensor suggest that the center and edges of the TTI layer are dominated by vortex sheets and vortex tubes, respectively. Because of the configuration of these vortical structures, the flow toward the TTI layer in the layer-normal direction generates a compressive strain, which is important to sustain the thin layer structure. The mean velocity jump due to the compressive strain is about 3 u η and is observed over a length of about 20 η, where u η and η are the Kolmogorov velocity and length scales, respectively. The thickness of the TTI layer is about 12 η, which hardly depends on time. The TTI layer has a large surface area when it is bounded by the large-TKE region. Consequently, the shearless mixing layer tends to entrain more amount of fluid from the large-TKE region than from the small-TKE region although the entrainment rate per unit surface area normalized by the Kolmogorov velocity is similar for both regions.