The large-scale structure of many turbulent flows encountered in practical situations such as aeronautics, industry, meteorology is nowadays successfully computed using the Kolmogorov–Kármán–Howarth energy cascade picture. This theory appears increasingly inaccurate when going down the energy cascade that terminates through intermittent spots of energy dissipation, at variance with the assumed homogeneity. This is problematic for the modelling of all processes that depend on small scales of turbulence, such as combustion instabilities or droplet atomization in industrial burners or cloud formation. This paper explores a paradigm shift where the homogeneity hypothesis is replaced by the assumption that turbulence contains singularities, as suggested by Onsager. This paradigm leads to a weak formulation of the Kolmogorov–Kármán–Howarth–Monin equation (WKHE) that allows taking into account explicitly the presence of singularities and their impact on the energy transfer and dissipation. It provides a local in scale, space and time description of energy transfers and dissipation, valid for any inhomogeneous, anisotropic flow, under any type of boundary conditions. The goal of this article is to discuss WKHE as a tool to get a new description of energy cascades and dissipation that goes beyond Kolmogorov and allows the description of small-scale intermittency. It puts the problem of intermittency and dissipation in turbulence into a modern framework, compatible with recent mathematical advances on the proof of Onsager’s conjecture.

A pressure impulse model is presented for wave impact on vertical circular cylinders. Pressure impulse is the time integral of the pressure during an impact of short time scale. The model is derived for a simplistic geometry and has relative impact height, crest length and cylinder radius as effective variables. The last parameter, the maximum angle of impact, is free and can be calibrated to yield the right force impulse. A progression of simpler pressure impulse models are derived in terms of a three-dimensional box generalization of the two-dimensional wall model and an axisymmetric model for vertical cylinders. The dependence on the model parameters is investigated in the simpler models and linked to the behaviour of the three-dimensional cylinder model. The model is next validated against numerical results for a wave impact for a phase- and direction-focused wave group. The maximum impact angle is determined by calibration against the force impulse. A good match of the pressure impulse fields is found. Further comparison to the force impulse of two common models in marine engineering reveals improved consistency for the present model. The model is found to provide a promising representation of the pressure impulse field, based on a limited number of input parameters. Its further validation and potential as a robust tool in force and response prediction is discussed.

We present a conditional space–time proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) formulation that is tailored to the eduction of the average, rare or intermittent events from an ensemble of realizations of a fluid process. By construction, the resulting spatio-temporal modes are coherent in space and over a predefined finite time horizon, and optimally capture the variance, or energy of the ensemble. For the example of intermittent acoustic radiation from a turbulent jet, we introduce a conditional expectation operator that focuses on the loudest events, as measured by a pressure probe in the far field and contained in the tail of the pressure signal’s probability distribution. Applied to high-fidelity simulation data, the method identifies a statistically significant ‘prototype’, or average acoustic burst event that is tracked over time. Most notably, the burst event can be traced back to its precursor, which opens up the possibility of prediction of an imminent burst. We furthermore investigate the mechanism underlying the prototypical burst event using linear stability theory and find that its structure and evolution are accurately predicted by optimal transient growth theory. The jet-noise problem demonstrates that the conditional space–time POD formulation applies even for systems with probability distributions that are not heavy-tailed, i.e. for systems in which events overlap and occur in rapid succession.

We examine the high-speed flow of pressurized gases between non-concentric cylinders where the inner cylinder rotates at constant speed while the outer cylinder is stationary. The flow is taken to be steady, two-dimensional, compressible, laminar, single phase and governed by a Reynolds lubrication equation. Approximations for the lubricating force and friction loss are derived using a perturbation expansion for large speed numbers. The present theory is valid for general Navier–Stokes fluids at nearly all states corresponding to ideal, dense and supercritical gases. Results of interest include the observation that pressurization gives rise to large increases in the lubricating force and decreases in the fluid friction. The lubrication force is found to scale with the bulk modulus. Within the context of the Reynolds equation an exact relation between total heat transfer and power loss is developed.

The flow around a sphere descending at constant speed in a very strongly stratified fluid ($Fr\lesssim 0.2$) is investigated by the shadowgraph method and particle image velocimetry. Unlike the flow under moderately strong stratification ($Fr\gtrsim 0.2$), which supports a thin cylindrical jet, the flow generates an unstable jet, which often develops into turbulence. The transition from a stable jet to an unstable jet occurs for a sufficiently low Froude number $Fr$ that satisfies $Fr/Re<1.57\times 10^{-3}$. The Froude number $Fr$ here is in the range of $0.0157<Fr<0.157$ or lower, while the Reynolds number $Re$ is in the range of $10\lesssim Re\lesssim 100$ for which the homogeneous fluid shows steady and axisymmetric flows. Since the radius of the jet can be estimated by the primitive length scale of the stratified fluid, i.e. $l_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{\ast }=\sqrt{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}^{\ast }/N^{\ast }}$ or $l_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{\ast }/2a^{\ast }=\sqrt{Fr/2Re}$, this predicts that the jet becomes unstable when it becomes thinner than approximately $l_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}}^{\ast }/2a^{\ast }=0.028$, where $N^{\ast }$ is the Brunt–Väisälä frequency, $a^{\ast }$ the radius of the sphere and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}^{\ast }$ the kinematic viscosity of the fluid. The instability begins when the boundary-layer thickness becomes thin, and the disturbances generated by shear instabilities would be transferred into the jet. When the flow is marginally unstable, two unstable states, i.e. a meandering jet and a turbulent jet, can appear. The meandering jet is thin with a high vertical velocity, while the turbulent jet is broad with a much smaller velocity. The meandering jet may persist for a long time, or develop into a turbulent jet in a short time. When the instability is sufficiently strong, only the turbulent jet could be observed.

The second-order structure functions (SFs) of the velocity field, which characterize the velocity difference at two points, are widely used in research into non-reacting turbulent flows. In the present paper, the approach is extended in order to study the influence of combustion-induced thermal expansion on turbulent flow within a premixed flame brush. For this purpose, SFs conditioned to various combinations of mixture states at two different points (reactant–reactant, reactant–product, product–product, etc.) are introduced in the paper and a relevant exact transport equation is derived in the appendix. Subsequently, in order to demonstrate the capabilities of the newly developed approach for advancing the understanding of turbulent reacting flows, the conditioned SFs are extracted from three-dimensional (3-D) direct numerical simulation data obtained from two statistically 1-D planar, fully developed, weakly turbulent, premixed, single-step-chemistry flames characterized by significantly different (7.53 and 2.50) density ratios, with all other things being approximately equal. Obtained results show that the conditioned SFs differ significantly from standard mean SFs and convey a large amount of important information on various local phenomena that stem from the influence of combustion-induced thermal expansion on turbulent flow. In particular, the conditioned SFs not only (i) indicate a number of already known local phenomena discussed in the paper, but also (ii) reveal a less recognized phenomenon such as substantial influence of combustion-induced thermal expansion on turbulence in constant-density unburned reactants and even (iii) allow us to detect a new phenomenon such as the appearance of strong local velocity perturbations (shear layers) within flamelets. Moreover, SFs conditioned to heat-release zones indicate a highly anisotropic influence of combustion-induced thermal expansion on the evolution of small-scale two-point velocity differences within flamelets, with the effects being opposite (an increase or a decrease) for different components of the local velocity vector.

Flow-induced rotation of an S-shaped rotor is investigated using an adaptive numerical scheme based on a vortex particle method. The boundary integral equation with respect to Bernoulli’s function is solved using a panel method for obtaining the pressure distribution on the rotor surface which applies the torque to the rotor. The present work first addresses the validation of the scheme against the previous studies of a rotating circular cylinder. Then, we compute the automatic rotation start of an S-shaped rotor from a quiescent state for various values of the moment of inertia. The computed flow patterns where the rotor supplies (or is supplied with) the torque to (or from) the fluid are shown during one cycle of rotation. The vortex shedding from the tip of the advancing bucket is found to play a key role in generating positive torque on the rotor. A remarkable finding is the fact that, after the rotor reaches a stable rotation, the trajectory of the limit cycle in the present autonomous system accounts for the stable rotating movement of the rotor. Furthermore, the hydrodynamic scenario of the rotor automatically starting up from a quiescent state and entering the limit cycle is elucidated for various values of the moment of inertia and the initial angle of the rotor.

The flow of a gravity current of finite volume and density $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{1}$ released from rest from a rectangular lock (of height $h_{0}$) into an ambient fluid of density $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{0}$ (${<}\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{1}$) in a system rotating with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}$ about the vertical $z$ is investigated by means of fully resolved direct numerical simulations (DNS) and a theoretical model (based on shallow-water and Ekman layer spin-up theories, including mixing). The motion of the dense fluid includes several stages: propagation in the $x$-direction accompanied by Coriolis acceleration/deflection in the $-y$-direction, which produces a quasi-steady wedge-shaped structure with significant anticyclonic velocity $v$, followed by a spin-up reduction of $v$ accompanied by a slow $x$ drift, and oscillation. The theoretical model aims to provide useful insights and approximations concerning the formation time and shape of wedge, and the subsequent spin-up effect. The main parameter is the Coriolis number, ${\mathcal{C}}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}h_{0}/(g^{\prime }h_{0})^{1/2}$, where $g^{\prime }=(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{1}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{0}-1)g$ is the reduced gravity. The DNS results are focused on a range of relatively small Coriolis numbers, $0.1\leqslant {\mathcal{C}}\leqslant 0.25$ (i.e. Rossby number $Ro=1/(2{\mathcal{C}})$ in the range $2\leqslant Ro\leqslant 5$), and a large range of Schmidt numbers $1\leqslant Sc<\infty$; the Reynolds number is large in all cases. The current spreads out in the $x$ direction until it is arrested by the Coriolis effect (in ${\sim}1/4$ revolution of the system). A complex motion develops about this state. First, we record oscillations on the inertial time scale $1/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}$ (which are a part of the geostrophic adjustment), accompanied by vortices at the interface. Second, we note the spread of the wedge on a significantly longer time scale; this is an indirect spin-up effect – mixing and entrainment reduce the lateral (angular) velocity, which in turn decreases the Coriolis support to the $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}h/\unicode[STIX]{x2202}x$ slope of the wedge shape. Contrary to non-rotating gravity currents, the front does not remain sharp as it is subject to (i) local stretching along the streamwise direction and (ii) convective mixing due to Kelvin–Helmholtz vortices generated by shear along the spanwise direction and stemming from Coriolis effects. The theoretical model predicts that the length of the wedge scales as ${\mathcal{C}}^{-2/3}$ (in contrast to the Rossby radius $\propto 1/{\mathcal{C}}$ which is relevant for large ${\mathcal{C}}$; and in contrast to ${\mathcal{C}}^{-1/2}$ for the axisymmetric lens).

We derive a two-dimensional depth-averaged model for coastal waves with both dispersive and dissipative effects. A tensor quantity called enstrophy models the subdepth large-scale turbulence, including its anisotropic character, and is a source of vorticity of the average flow. The small-scale turbulence is modelled through a turbulent-viscosity hypothesis. This fully nonlinear model has equivalent dispersive properties to the Green–Naghdi equations and is treated, both for the optimization of these properties and for the numerical resolution, with the same techniques which are used for the Green–Naghdi system. The model equations are solved with a discontinuous Galerkin discretization based on a decoupling between the hyperbolic and non-hydrostatic parts of the system. The predictions of the model are compared to experimental data in a wide range of physical conditions. Simulations were run in one-dimensional and two-dimensional cases, including run-up and run-down on beaches, non-trivial topographies, wave trains over a bar or propagation around an island or a reef. A very good agreement is reached in every cases, validating the predictive empirical laws for the parameters of the model. These comparisons confirm the efficiency of the present strategy, highlighting the enstrophy as a robust and reliable tool to describe wave breaking even in a two-dimensional context. Compared with existing depth-averaged models, this approach is numerically robust and adds more physical effects without significant increase in numerical complexity.

Cascades of temperature and entropy fluctuations are studied by numerical simulations of stationary three-dimensional compressible turbulence with a heat source. The fluctuation spectra of velocity, compressible velocity component, density and pressure exhibit the $-5/3$ scaling in an inertial range. The strong acoustic equilibrium relation between spectra of the compressible velocity component and pressure is observed. The $-5/3$ scaling behaviour is also identified for the fluctuation spectra of temperature and entropy, with the Obukhov–Corrsin constants close to that of a passive scalar spectrum. It is shown by Kovasznay decomposition that the dynamics of the temperature field is dominated by the entropic mode. The average subgrid-scale (SGS) fluxes of temperature and entropy normalized by the total dissipation rates are close to 1 in the inertial range. The cascade of temperature is dominated by the compressible mode of the velocity field, indicating that the theory of a passive scalar in incompressible turbulence is not suitable to describe the inter-scale transfer of temperature in compressible turbulence. In contrast, the cascade of entropy is dominated by the solenoidal mode of the velocity field. The different behaviours of cascades of temperature and entropy are partly explained by the geometrical properties of SGS fluxes. Moreover, the different effects of local compressibility on the SGS fluxes of temperature and entropy are investigated by conditional averaging with respect to the filtered dilatation, demonstrating that the effect of compressibility on the cascade of temperature is much stronger than on the cascade of entropy.

The turbulence state in a supersonic boundary layer subjected to a transverse sonic jet is studied by conducting direct numerical simulations. Turbulence statistics for two jet-to-cross-flow momentum flux ratios $(J)$ of 2.3 and 5.5 based on the previous simulation (Sun & Hu, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 850, 2018, pp. 551–583) are given and compared with a flat-plate boundary layer without a jet $(J=0.0)$. The instantaneous and time-averaged flow features around the transverse jet in the supersonic boundary layer are analysed. It is found that, in the near-wall region, turbulence is suppressed significantly with increasing $J$ in the lateral boundary layer around the jet and the turbulence decay is retained in the downstream recovery region. The local boundary-layer thickness decreases noticeably in the lateral downstream of the jet. Analysis of the cross-flow streamlines reveals a double-expansion character in the vicinity of the jet, which involves the reattachment expansion related to the flow over the jet windward separation bubble and the jet lateral expansion related to the flow around the jet barrel shock. The double expansion leads to the turbulence decay in the jet lateral boundary layer and causes a slow recovery of the outer layer in the far-field boundary layer. A preliminary experiment based on the nanoparticle laser scattering technique is conducted and confirms the existence of the turbulence decay phenomenon.

The perturbations triggered by free-stream vortical disturbances in compressible boundary layers developing over concave walls are studied numerically and through asymptotic methods. We employ an asymptotic framework based on the limit of high Görtler number, the scaled parameter defining the centrifugal effects; we use an eigenvalue formulation where the free-stream forcing is neglected; and we solve the receptivity problem by integrating the compressible boundary-region equations complemented by appropriate initial and boundary conditions that synthesize the influence of the free-stream vortical flow. Near the leading edge, the boundary-layer perturbations develop as thermal Klebanoff modes and, when centrifugal effects become influential, these modes turn into thermal Görtler vortices, i.e. streamwise rolls characterized by intense velocity and temperature perturbations. The high-Görtler-number asymptotic analysis reveals the condition for which the Görtler vortices start to grow. The Mach number is destabilizing when the spanwise diffusion is negligible and stabilizing when the boundary-layer thickness is comparable with the spanwise wavelength of the vortices. When the Görtler number is large, the theoretical analysis also shows that the vortices move towards the wall as the Mach number increases. These results are confirmed by the receptivity analysis, which additionally clarifies that the temperature perturbations respond to this reversed behaviour further downstream than the velocity perturbations. A matched-asymptotic composite profile, found by combining the inviscid core solution and the near-wall viscous solution, agrees well with the receptivity profile sufficiently downstream and at high Görtler number. The Görtler vortices tend to move towards the boundary-layer core when the flow is more stable, i.e. as the frequency or the Mach number increase, or when the curvature decreases. As a consequence, a region of unperturbed flow is generated near the wall. We also find that the streamwise length scale of the boundary-layer perturbations is always smaller than the free-stream streamwise wavelength. During the initial development of the vortices, only the receptivity calculations are accurate. At streamwise locations where the free-stream disturbances have fully decayed, the growth rate and wavelength are computed with sufficient accuracy by the eigenvalue analysis, although the correct amplitude and evolution of the Görtler vortices can only be determined by the receptivity calculations. It is further proved that the eigenvalue predictions of the growth rate and wavenumber worsen as the Mach number increases as these quantities show a dependence on the wall-normal direction. We conclude by qualitatively comparing our results with the direct numerical simulations available in the literature.

The transient force exerted by a low-speed liquid droplet impinging onto a flat rigid surface is investigated experimentally. The measurements employ a high-sensitivity piezo-electric sensor, along with a high-speed camera, and cover four decades in droplet Reynolds number and greater than two decades in Weber number. Across these ranges, the peak of individual force profiles span from 3 mN to over 1300 mN. Once normalised, the force–time profiles support the existence of an inertially dominated self-similar regime. Within this regime, previous numerical and theoretical studies predict a $\sqrt{t}$ dependence of impact normal force during the initial pre-peak rise. While our measurements confirm this finding, they also indicate that, after the peak force the profiles exhibit an exponential decay. This long-time decay law suggests treatment of the momentum transport from the droplet using a lumped model. An observed linear dependence between the force and force decay rate supports this approach. The reason for the efficacy of treating this system via a lumped model apparently connects to the physics right at the surface that limit the rate of momentum transport from the droplet to the surface. This is explored by estimating the momentum transfer by solely using the deforming droplet shape, but under the condition of negligible momentum gradients within the droplet. The short- and long-time solutions are combined and the resulting model equation is shown to accurately cover the entire force–time profile.

Scaling arguments are presented to quantify the widely used diapycnal (irreversible) mixing coefficient $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}_{PE}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}$ in stratified flows as a function of the turbulent Froude number $Fr=\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}/Nk$. Here, $N$ is the buoyancy frequency, $k$ is the turbulent kinetic energy, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}$ is the rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}_{PE}$ is the rate of dissipation of turbulent potential energy. We show that for $Fr\gg 1$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\propto Fr^{-2}$, for $Fr\sim \mathit{O}(1)$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\propto Fr^{-1}$ and for $Fr\ll 1$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\propto Fr^{0}$. These scaling results are tested using high-resolution direct numerical simulation (DNS) data from three different studies and are found to hold reasonably well across a wide range of $Fr$ that encompasses weakly stratified to strongly stratified flow conditions. Given that the $Fr$ cannot be readily computed from direct field measurements, we propose a practical approach that can be used to infer the $Fr$ from readily measurable quantities in the field. Scaling analyses show that $Fr\propto (L_{T}/L_{O})^{-2}$ for $L_{T}/L_{O}>O(1)$, $Fr\propto (L_{T}/L_{O})^{-1}$ for $L_{T}/L_{O}\sim O(1)$, and $Fr\propto (L_{T}/L_{O})^{-2/3}$ for $L_{T}/L_{O}<O(1)$, where $L_{T}$ is the Thorpe length scale and $L_{O}$ is the Ozmidov length scale. These formulations are also tested with DNS data to highlight their validity. These novel findings could prove to be a significant breakthrough not only in providing a unifying (and practically useful) parameterization for the mixing efficiency in stably stratified turbulence but also for inferring the dynamic state of turbulence in geophysical flows.

We develop a new boundary integral method for solving the coupled electro- and hydrodynamics of vesicle suspensions in Stokes flow. This relies on a well-conditioned boundary integral equation formulation for the leaky-dielectric model describing the electric response of the vesicles and an efficient numerical solver capable of handling highly deflated vesicles. Our method is applied to explore vesicle electrohydrodynamics in three cases. First, we study the classical prolate–oblate–prolate transition dynamics observed upon application of a uniform DC electric field. We discover that, in contrast to the squaring previously found with nearly spherical vesicles, highly deflated vesicles tend to form buds. Second, we illustrate the capabilities of the method by quantifying the electrorheology of a dilute vesicle suspension. Finally, we investigate the pairwise interactions of vesicles and find three different responses when the key parameters are varied: (i) chain formation, where they self-assemble to form a chain that is aligned along the field direction; (ii) circulatory motion, where they rotate about each other; (iii) oscillatory motion, where they form a chain but oscillate about each other. The last two are unique to vesicles and are not observed in the case of other soft particle suspensions such as drops.

Finite-amplitude wave groups with multiple near-resonances are investigated to extend the existing results due to Liu et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 835, 2018, pp. 624–653) from steady-state wave groups in deep water to steady-state wave groups in finite water depth. The slow convergence rate of the series solution in the homotopy analysis method and extra unpredictable high-frequency components in finite water depth make it hard to obtain finite-amplitude wave groups accurately. To overcome these difficulties, a solution procedure that combines the homotopy analysis method-based analytical approach and Galerkin method-based numerical approaches has been used. For weakly nonlinear wave groups, the continuum of steady-state resonance from deep water to finite water depth is established. As nonlinearity increases, the frequency bands broaden and more steady-state wave groups are obtained. Finite-amplitude wave groups with steepness no less than $0.20$ are obtained and the resonant sets configuration of steady-state wave groups are analysed in different water depths. For waves in deep water, the majority of non-trivial components appear around the primary ones due to four-wave, six-wave, eight-wave or even ten-wave resonant interactions. The dominant role of four-wave resonant interactions for steady-state wave groups in deep water is demonstrated. For waves in finite water depth, additional non-trivial high-frequency components appear in the spectra due to three-wave, four-wave, five-wave or even six-wave resonant interactions with the components around the primary ones. The amplitude of these high-frequency components increases further as the water depth decreases. Resonances composed by components only around the primary ones are suppressed while resonances composed by components around the primary ones and from the high-frequency domain are enhanced. The spectrum of steady-state resonant wave groups changes with the water depth and the significant role of three-wave resonant interactions in finite water depth is demonstrated.

Turbulent miscible fountains discharged vertically from a round source into quiescent uniform unbounded environments of density $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{0}$ are investigated numerically using large-eddy simulations. Both upward and downward fountains are considered. The numerical simulations cover a wide range of the density ratio $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{i}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{0}$, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{i}$ is the source density of the released fluid. These simulations are used to evaluate how the initial maximum height $H_{i}$ and the steady state height $H_{ss}$ of the fountains are affected by large density contrasts, i.e. in the general non-Boussinesq case. For both upward and downward non-Boussinesq fountains, the ratio $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}=H_{i}/H_{ss}$ remains close to $1.45$, as usually observed for Boussinesq fountains. However the Froude (linear) scaling originally introduced by Turner (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 26 (4), 1966, pp. 779–792) for Boussinesq fountains is no longer valid to determine the steady fountain height. The ratio between $H_{ss}$ and the height predicted by the Turner’s relation turns out to be proportional to $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{i}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}_{0})^{n}$. Remarkably, it is found that the power exponent $n$ differs following the direction in which the buoyant fluid is released ($n=1/2$ for downward fountains and $n=3/4$ for upward fountains). This new result demonstrates that for non-Boussinesq turbulent fountains the configurations heavy/light and light/heavy are not equivalent. Finally, scalings are proposed for fountains, regardless of the direction (upwards and downwards) and of the density difference (Boussinesq and non-Boussinesq).

Self-preservation analyses of the equations for the mean temperature and the second-order temperature structure function on the axis of a slightly heated turbulent round jet are exploited in an attempt to develop an analytical expression for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}$, the mean dissipation rate of $\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{2}}/2$, where $\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{2}}$ is the temperature variance. The analytical approach follows that of Thiesset et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 748, 2014, R2) who developed an expression for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}_{k}$, the mean turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, using the transport equation for $\overline{(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}u)^{2}}$, the second-order velocity structure function. Experimental data show that complete self-preservation for all scales of motion is very well satisfied along the jet axis for streamwise distances larger than approximately 30 times the nozzle diameter. This validation of the analytical results is of particular interest as it provides justification and confidence in the analytical derivation of power laws representing the streamwise evolution of different physical quantities along the axis, such as: $\unicode[STIX]{x1D702}$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}$, $R_{U}$, $R_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}}$ (all representing characteristic length scales), the mean temperature excess $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}_{0}$, the mixed velocity–temperature moments $\overline{u\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{2}}$, $\overline{v\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{2}}$ and $\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{2}}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}$. Simple models are proposed for $\overline{u\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{2}}$ and $\overline{v\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}^{2}}$ in order to derive an analytical expression for $A_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}}$, the prefactor of the power law describing the streamwise evolution of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}$. Further, expressions are also derived for the turbulent Péclet number and the thermal-to-mechanical time scale ratio. These expressions involve global parameters that are most likely to be influenced by the initial and/or boundary conditions and are therefore expected to be flow dependent.

Unsteady spatially localized states such as puffs, slugs or spots play an important role in transition to turbulence. In plane Couette flow, steady versions of these states are found on two intertwined solution branches describing homoclinic snaking (Schneider et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 104, 2010, 104501). These branches can be used to generate a number of spatially localized initial conditions whose transition can be investigated. From the low Reynolds numbers where homoclinic snaking is first observed ($Re<175$) to transitional ones ($Re\approx 325$), these spatially localized states traverse various regimes where their relaminarization time and dynamics are affected by the dynamical structure of phase space. These regimes are reported and characterized in this paper for a $4\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}$-periodic domain in the streamwise direction as a function of the two remaining variables: the Reynolds number and the width of the localized pattern. Close to the snaking, localized states are attracted by spatially localized periodic orbits before relaminarizing. At larger values of the Reynolds number, the flow enters a chaotic transient of variable duration before relaminarizing. Very long chaotic transients ($t>10^{4}$) can be observed without difficulty for relatively low values of the Reynolds number ($Re\approx 250$).

We present a study of Lagrangian intermittency and its characteristic time scales. Using the concepts of flying and diving residence times above and below a given threshold in the magnitude of turbulence quantities, we infer the time spectra of the Lagrangian temporal fluctuations of dissipation, acceleration and enstrophy by means of a direct numerical simulation in homogeneous and isotropic turbulence. We then relate these time scales, first, to the presence of extreme events in turbulence and, second, to the local flow characteristics. Analyses confirm the existence in turbulent quantities of holes mirroring bursts, both of which are at the core of what constitutes Lagrangian intermittency. It is shown that holes are associated with quiescent laminar regions of the flow. Moreover, Lagrangian holes occur over few Kolmogorov time scales while Lagrangian bursts happen over longer periods scaling with the global decorrelation time scale, hence showing that loss of the history of the turbulence quantities along particle trajectories in turbulence is not continuous. Such a characteristic partially explains why current Lagrangian stochastic models fail at reproducing our results. More generally, the Lagrangian dataset of residence times shown here represents another manner for qualifying the accuracy of models. We also deliver a theoretical approximation of mean residence times, which highlights the importance of the correlation between turbulence quantities and their time derivatives in setting temporal statistics. Finally, whether in a hole or a burst, the straining structure along particle trajectories always evolves self-similarly (in a statistical sense) from shearless two-dimensional to shear bi-axial configurations. We speculate that this latter configuration represents the optimum manner to dissipate locally the available energy.