The Navier-Stokes equation and a fully developed turbulence

TL;DR

This paper provides explicit solutions for potential flow, discusses the instability of vorticial solutions in Navier-Stokes equations, and models fully developed turbulence as a distribution of singular turbulence centers, revealing emergent dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel representation of turbulence as a distribution of singular centers and analyzes the multi-scale nature of Navier-Stokes solutions under turbulence conditions.

Findings

Explicit solutions for potential flow are given.

Vorticial solutions are generally unstable and form an unstable vorticial liquid.

Turbulence is modeled as a distribution of singular centers with emergent dynamics.

Abstract

In fairly general conditions we give explicit (smooth) solutions for the potential flow. We show that, rigorously speaking, the equations of the fluid mechanics have not rotational solutions. However, within the usual approximations of an incompressible fluid and an isentropic flow, the remaining Navier-Stokes equation has approximate vorticial (rotational) solutions, generated by viscosity. In general, the vortices are unstable, and a discrete distribution of vorticial solutions is not in mechanical equilibrium; it forms an unstable vorticial liquid. On the other hand, these solutions may exhibit turbulent, fluctuating instabilities for large variations of the velocity over short distances. We represent a fully developed turbulence as a homogeneous, isotropic and highly-fluctuating distribution of singular centres of turbulence. A regular mean flow can be included. In these circumstances the Navier-Stokes equation exhibits three time scales. The equations of the mean flow can be disentangled from the equations of the fluctuating part, which is reduced to a vanishing inertial term. This latter equation is not satisfied after averaging out the temporal fluctuations. However, for a homogeneous and isotropic distribution of non-singular turbulence centres the equation for the inertial term is satisfied trivially, i.e. both the average fluctuating velocity and the average fluctuating inertial term are zero. If the velocity is singular at the turbulence centres, we are left with a quasi-ideal classical gas of singularities, or a solution of singularities in quasi thermal equilibrium in the background fluid. This is an example of an emergent dynamics. We give three examples of vorticial liquids.