Symmetries and turbulence modeling. A critical examination

TL;DR

This paper critically examines a recent turbulence modeling approach, revealing fundamental flaws due to nonphysical symmetries, and demonstrates that the proposed scaling laws do not surpass classical solutions, questioning the model's validity.

Contribution

It provides a critical analysis showing that the recent turbulence model's key symmetries are nonphysical, invalidating its claimed advancements over classical models.

Findings

The proposed scaling laws do not go beyond classical solutions.

The model incorporates nonphysical symmetries leading to inconsistencies.

Previous corrections to the model were not acknowledged in subsequent publications.

Abstract

The recent study by Klingenberg, Oberlack & Pluemacher (2020) proposes a new strategy for modeling turbulence in general. A proof-of-concept is presented therein for the particular flow configuration of a spatially evolving turbulent planar jet flow, coming to the conclusion that their model can generate scaling laws which go beyond the classical ones. Our comment, however, shows that their proof-of-concept is flawed and that their newly proposed scaling laws do not go beyond any classical solutions. Hence, their argument of having established a new and more advanced turbulence model cannot be confirmed. The problem is already rooted in the modeling strategy itself, in that a nonphysical statistical scaling symmetry gets implemented. Breaking this symmetry will restore the internal consistency and will turn all self-similar solutions back to the classical ones. To note is that their model also includes a second nonphysical symmetry. One of the authors already acknowledged this fact for turbulent jet flow in a formerly published Corrigendum (Sadeghi, Oberlack & Gauding, 2020). However, the Corrigendum is not cited and so the reader is not made aware that their method has fundamental problems that lead to inconsistencies and conflicting results. Instead, the very same nonphysical symmetry gets published again. Yet, this unscientific behaviour is not corrected, but repeated and continued in the subsequent and further misleading publication Klingenberg & Oberlack (2022), which is examined in this update in the appendix.