Variational bound on energy dissipation in turbulent shear flow

TL;DR

This paper numerically solves a variational principle to establish upper bounds on energy dissipation in turbulent shear flow across all Reynolds numbers, revealing structural features and scaling behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical approach to the extended Doering-Constantin variational principle, capturing the entire Reynolds number range and identifying key bifurcation phenomena.

Findings

Bound exhibits a minimum at intermediate Reynolds numbers

Recovers Busse bound asymptotically

Reveals bifurcation of minimizing wavenumbers

Abstract

We present numerical solutions to the extended Doering-Constantin variational principle for upper bounds on the energy dissipation rate in plane Couette flow, bridging the entire range from low to asymptotically high Reynolds numbers. Our variational bound exhibits structure, namely a pronounced minimum at intermediate Reynolds numbers, and recovers the Busse bound in the asymptotic regime. The most notable feature is a bifurcation of the minimizing wavenumbers, giving rise to simple scaling of the optimized variational parameters, and of the upper bound, with the Reynolds number.