A phenomenological theory of Eulerian and Lagrangian velocity fluctuations in turbulent flows

TL;DR

This paper develops a phenomenological multifractal framework to describe Eulerian and Lagrangian velocity fluctuations in turbulence, aligning theoretical predictions with experimental and numerical data on intermittency and velocity statistics.

Contribution

It extends the multifractal formalism to both dissipative scales and the Lagrangian framework, providing explicit predictions for velocity gradient and acceleration statistics.

Findings

Universal intermittency captured by the multifractal model.

Predictions of probability density functions and moments match empirical data.

Lagrangian and Eulerian singularity spectra are related and consistent.

Abstract

A phenomenological theory of the fluctuations of velocity occurring in a fully developed homogeneous and isotropic turbulent flow is presented. The focus is made on the fluctuations of the spatial (Eulerian) and temporal (Lagrangian) velocity increments. The universal nature of the intermittency phenomenon as observed in experimental measurements and numerical simulations is shown to be fully taken into account by the multiscale picture proposed by the multifractal formalism, and its extensions to the dissipative scales and to the Lagrangian framework. The article is devoted to the presentation of these arguments and to their comparisons against empirical data. In particular, explicit predictions of the statistics, such as probability density functions and high order moments, of the velocity gradients and acceleration are derived. In the Eulerian framework, at a given Reynolds number, they are shown to depend on a single parameter function called the singularity spectrum and to a universal constant governing the transition between the inertial and dissipative ranges. The Lagrangian singularity spectrum compares well with its Eulerian counterpart by a transformation based on incompressibility, homogeneity and isotropy and the remaining constant is shown to be difficult to estimate on empirical data. It is finally underlined the limitations of the increment to quantify accurately the singular nature of Lagrangian velocity. This is confirmed using higher order increments unbiased by the presence of linear trends, as they are observed on velocity along a trajectory.