# Hydrodynamic and Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Wire Turbulence

## TL;DR

This paper presents simulations of magnetized and non-magnetized supersonic flows through wire meshes, demonstrating the generation of marginally supersonic turbulence with anisotropic structures, relevant for laboratory MHD turbulence studies.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed simulation analysis of wire mesh driven MHD turbulence, highlighting the transition from hypersonic shocks to marginally supersonic turbulence.

## Key findings

- Downstream turbulence is marginally supersonic to transonic.
- Turbulence exhibits high anisotropy.
- Initial hypersonic shock leads to turbulence with Mach number around 1.

## Abstract

We report on simulations of laboratory experiments in which magnetized supersonic flows are driven through a wire mesh. The goal of the study was to investigate the ability of such a configuration to generate supersonic, MHD turbulence. We first report on the morphological structures that develop in both magnetized and non-magnetized cases. We then analyze the flow using a variety of statistical measures, including power spectra and probability distribution functions of the density. Using these results we estimate the sonic mach number in the flows downstream of the wire mesh. We find the initially hypersonic (M=20) planar shock through the wire mesh does lead to downstream turbulent conditions. However, in both magnetized and non-magnetized cases, the resultant turbulence was marginally supersonic to transonic (M~1), and highly anisotropic in structure.