Direct Numerical Simulations of the Navier-Stokes Alpha Model

Using numerical simulations at moderate magnetic Reynolds numbers up to 220 it is shown that in the kinematic regime, isotropic helical turbulence leads to an alpha effect and a turbulent diffusivity whose values are independent of the magnetic Reynolds number, $\Rm$, provided $\Rm$ exceeds unity. These turbulent coefficients are also consistent with expectations from the first order smoothing approximation. For small values of $\Rm$, alpha and turbulent diffusivity are propo...

The original goal of Large Eddy Simulations of fully developed turbulent flows was to accurately describe large-scale flow features ${\bf u}(\Delta)$ at the scales $r\geq \Delta$ where $\Delta$ is a size of computational mesh. The effect of small-scale velocity fluctuations ($r<\Delta$) was to be accounted for by effective transport coefficients (subgrid models) in the coarse-grained Navier-Stokes equations. It is shown in this paper that, due to anomalous inertial range scal...

In the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) framework for modeling a turbulent flow, when the large scale velocity field is defined by low-pass filtering the full velocity field, a Taylor series expansion of the full velocity field in terms of the large scale velocity field leads (at the leading order) to the nonlinear gradient model for the subfilter stresses. Motivated by the fact that while the nonlinear gradient model shows excellent a priori agreement in resolved simulations, the...

In Navier-Stokes turbulence, energy and helicity injected at large scales are subject to a joint direct cascade, with both quantities exhibiting a spectral scaling $\propto k^{-5/3}$. We demonstrate via direct numerical simulations that the two cascades are compatible due to the existence of a strong scale-dependent phase alignment between velocity and vorticity fluctuations, with the phase alignment angle scaling as $\cos\alpha_k\propto k^{-1}$.

We study the construction of subgrid-scale models for large-eddy simulation of incompressible turbulent flows. In particular, we aim to consolidate a systematic approach of constructing subgrid-scale models, based on the idea that it is desirable that subgrid-scale models are consistent with the mathematical and physical properties of the Navier-Stokes equations and the turbulent stresses. To that end, we first discuss in detail the symmetries of the Navier-Stokes equations, ...

In this paper a numerical procedure to simulate low diffusivity scalar turbulence is presented. The method consists of using a grid for the advected scalar with a higher spatial resolutions than that of the momentum. The latter usually requires a less refined mesh and integrating both fields on a single grid tailored to the most demanding variable, produces an unnecessary computational overhead. A multiple resolution approach is used also in the time integration in order to m...

Herein, we derive the fractional Laplacian operator as a means to represent the mean friction force arising in a turbulent flow: $ \rho \frac{D\bar{\bf u}}{Dt} = -\nabla p + \mu_\alpha \nabla^2\bar{\bf u} + \rho C_\alpha \iiint_{\!-\infty}^\infty \frac{ \bar{\bf u}{\scriptstyle(t,{\bf x}')} - \bar{\bf u}{\scriptstyle(t,{\bf x})} }{|{\bf x}'-{\bf x}|^{\alpha+3}} \,d{\bf x}' $, where $\bar{\bf u}{\scriptstyle(t,{\bf x})}$ is the ensemble-averaged velocity field, $\mu_\alpha$ ...

We present data from high-resolution numerical simulations of the Navier-Stokes-$\alpha$ and the Leray-$\alpha$ models for two-dimensional turbulence. It was shown previously (Lunasin et al., J. Turbulence, 8, (2007), 751-778), that for wavenumbers $k$ such that $k\alpha\gg 1$, the energy spectrum of the smoothed velocity field for the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes-$\alpha$ (NS-$\alpha$) model scales as $k^{-7}$. This result is in agreement with the scaling deduced by dimensi...

Submitted by the authors for the June 27-29 Princeton Conference. Questions should be directed to: qian@cfd.princeton.edu

Using simulations of slowly rotating stratified turbulence, we show that the alpha effect responsible for the generation of astrophysical magnetic fields is proportional to the logarithmic gradient of kinetic energy density rather than that of momentum, as was previously thought. This result is in agreement with a new analytic theory developed in this paper for large Reynolds numbers. Thus, the contribution of density stratification is less important than that of turbulent ve...