Persistence of large scale coherent structures in a turbulent pipe flow through an improved lattice Boltzmann approach

TL;DR

This study uses an advanced lattice Boltzmann method to simulate turbulent pipe flow, revealing persistent large-scale structures and their stochastic transition dynamics, with implications for turbulence modeling accuracy.

Contribution

Introduces a sixth-order Hermite expansion in lattice Boltzmann simulations, improving the accuracy of turbulent flow representation and structure analysis.

Findings

Accurately reproduces fourth statistical moment of turbulence

Identifies memory effects linked to large-scale forcing

Transitions between structures are Markovian at fine resolution

Abstract

We simulated a turbulent pipe flow within the Lattice Boltzmann Method using a multiple-relaxation-time collision operator with Maxwell-Boltzmann equilibrium distribution expanded, for the sake of a more accurate description, up to the sixth order in Hermite polynomials. The moderately turbulent flow ($Re_{\tau} \approx 181.3$) is able to reproduce up to the fourth statistical moment with great accuracy, compared with other numerical schemes and with experimental data. A coherent structure identification was performed based on the most energetic streamwise turbulent mode, which revealed a surprising memory effect related to the large scale forcing scheme used to trigger the turbulent state in the pipe. We observe that the existence of large scale motions which are out of the pipe's stationary regime do not affect the detailed single-point statistical features of the flow. Furthermore, the transitions between the coherent structures of different topological modes were analyzed as a stochastic process. We find that for finely resolved data the transitions are effectively Markovian, but for larger decimation time lags, due to topological mode degeneracy, non-Markovian behavior emerges, in agreement with previous experimental studies.