Turbulence in two dimensional visco - elastic medium

TL;DR

This study investigates turbulence in a two-dimensional visco-elastic medium, revealing that elastic properties can induce turbulence at low Reynolds numbers and inhibit typical spectral cascade processes.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that elastic turbulence can occur in 2D visco-elastic media at low Reynolds numbers and explores how memory effects inhibit inverse spectral cascade.

Findings

Elastic turbulence occurs at low Reynolds numbers.

Memory relaxation time inhibits inverse spectral cascade.

Elastic properties influence turbulence onset and behavior.

Abstract

The properties of decaying turbulence is studied with the help of a Generalized Hydrodynamic (GHD) fluid model in the context of two dimensional visco - elastic medium such as a strongly coupled dusty plasma system. For the incompressible case considered here however, the observations are valid for a wider class of visco - elastic systems not necessarily associated with plasmas only. Our observations show that an initial spectrum that is confined in a limited domain of wave numbers becomes broad, even when the Reynold's number is much less than the critical value required for the onset of turbulence in Newtonian fluids. This is a signature of elastic turbulence where Weissenberg's number also plays a role in the onset of turbulence. This has been reported in several experiments. It is also shown that the existence of memory relaxation time parameter and the transverse shear wave inhibit the normal process (for 2-D systems) of inverse spectral cascade in this case. A detailed simulation study has been carried out for the understanding of this inhibition.