A Statistical Theory of Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulence

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive statistical theory of homogeneous isotropic turbulence based on bifurcation analysis, Lyapunov methods, and Fourier analysis, explaining the energy cascade and velocity fluctuation statistics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel turbulence theory linking bifurcations, scales, and Reynolds number, and explains the energy cascade mechanism and velocity difference statistics.

Findings

The theory accurately describes isotropic turbulence properties.

It explains the energy cascade from large to small scales.

Provides a method to calculate the velocity difference PDF.

Abstract

The present work proposes a theory of isotropic and homogeneous turbulence for incompressible fluids, which assumes that the turbulence is due to the bifurcations associated to the velocity field. The theory is formulated using a representation of the fluid motion which is more general than the classical Navier-Stokes equations, where the fluid state variables are expressed in terms of the referential coordinates. The theory is developed according to the following four items: 1) Study of the route toward the turbulence through the bifurcations analysis of the kinematic equations. 2) Referential description of the motion and calculation of the velocity fluctuation using the Lyapunov analysis of the local deformation. 3) Study of the mechanism of the energy cascade from large to small scales through the Lyapunov analysis of the relative kinematics equations of motion. 4) Determination of the statistics of the velocity difference with the Fourier analysis. Each item contributes to the formulation of the theory. The theory gives the connection between number of bifurcations, scales and Reynolds number at the onset of the turbulence and supplies an explanation for the mechanism of the energy cascade which leads to the closure of the von K\'arm\'an-Howarth equation. The theory also gives the statistics of the velocity difference fluctuation and permits the calculation of its PDF. The presented results show that the proposed theory describes quite well the properties of the isotropic turbulence.