Intermittency and Universality in Fully-Developed Inviscid and Weakly-Compressible Turbulent Flows

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution simulations to analyze intermittency and universality in compressible turbulence, revealing similar velocity behavior to incompressible flows and identifying front-like density structures without shocks.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the statistical properties of intermittency in compressible turbulence and compares them to incompressible cases, highlighting universality and specific density features.

Findings

Velocity intermittency similar to incompressible turbulence

Presence of front-like density structures

No shocks observed in density field

Abstract

We performed high resolution numerical simulations of homogenous and isotropic compressible turbulence, with an average 3D Mach number close to 0.3. We study the statistical properties of intermittency for velocity, density and entropy. For the velocity field, which is the primary quantity that can be compared to the isotropic incompressible case, we find no statistical differences in its behavior in the inertial range due either to the slight compressibility or to the different dissipative mechanism. For the density field, we find evidence of ``front-like'' structures, although no shocks are produced by the simulation.