Lagrangian characteristics of turbulence and scalar transport in direct numerical simulations

Abstract

A study of the Lagrangian statistical properties of velocity and passive scalar fields using direct numerical simulations is presented, for the case of stationary isotropic turbulence with uniform mean scalar gradients. Data at higher grid resolutions (up to 512³ and Taylor-scale Reynolds number 234) allow an update of previous velocity results at lower Reynolds number, including intermittency and dimensionality effects on vorticity time scales. The emphasis is on Lagrangian scalar time series which are new to the literature and important for stochastic mixing models. The variance of the ‘total’ Lagrangian scalar value (ϕ˜⁺, combining contributions from both mean and fluctuations) grows with time, with the velocity–scalar cross-correlation function and fluid particle displacements playing major roles. The Lagrangian increment of ϕ˜⁺ conditioned upon velocity and scalar fluctuations is well represented by a linear regression model whose parameters depend on both Reynolds number and Schmidt number. The Lagrangian scalar fluctuation is non-Markovian and has a longer time scale than the velocity, which is due to the strong role of advective transport, and is in contrast to results in an Eulerian frame where the scalars have shorter time scales. The scalar dissipation is highly intermittent and becomes de-correlated in time more rapidly than the energy dissipation. Differential diffusion for scalars with Schmidt numbers between 1/8 and 1 is characterized by asymmetry in the two-scalar cross-correlation function, a shorter time scale for the difference between two scalars, as well as a systematic decrease in the Lagrangian coherency spectrum up to at least the Kolmogorov frequency. These observations are consistent with recent work suggesting that differential diffusion remains important in the small scales at high Reynolds number.