Master-modes in 3D turbulent channel flow

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the existence of master modes in 3D turbulent channel flow, showing they can determine the entire flow's evolution and capturing key flow features with potential for analyzing rare events.

Contribution

The paper numerically proves the existence of minimal master-mode sets in turbulent channel flow and explores their properties and applications for flow analysis.

Findings

Minimal master-mode set can approximate mean velocity fields.

Large-scale structures are contained within the minimal master-mode set.

Master-mode databases facilitate investigation of rare turbulent flow events.

Abstract

Turbulent flow fields can be expanded into a series in a set of basic functions. The terms of such series are often called modes. A master- (or determining) mode set is a subset of these modes, the time history of which uniquely determines the time history of the entire turbulent flow provided that this flow is developed. In the present work the existence of the master-mode-set is demonstrated numerically for turbulent channel flow. The minimal size of a master-mode set and the rate of the process of the recovery of the entire flow from the master-mode set history are estimated. The velocity field corresponding to the minimal master-mode set is found to be a good approximation for mean velocity in the entire flow field. Mean characteristics involving velocity derivatives deviate in a very close vicinity to the wall, while master-mode two-point correlations exhibit unrealistic oscillations. This can be improved by using a larger than minimal master-mode set. The near-wall streaks are found to be contained in the velocity field corresponding to the minimal master-mode set, and the same is true at least for the large-scale part of the longitudinal vorticity structure. A database containing the time history of a master-mode set is demonstrated to be an efficient tool for investigating rare events in turbulent flows. In particular, a travelling-wave-like object was identified on the basis of the analysis of the database. Two master-mode-set databases of the time history of a turbulent channel flow are made available online at http://www.dnsdata.afm.ses.soton.ac.uk/. The services provided include the facility for the code uploaded by a user to be run on the server with an access to the data.