Direct numerical simulation study of the interaction between the polymer effect and velocity gradient tensor in decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence

Direct numerical simulation of decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence （DHIT） of a polymer solution is performed. In order to understand the polymer effect on turbulence or additive-turbulence interaction, we directly investigate the influence of polymers on velocity gradient tensor including vorticity and strain. By visualizing vortex tubes and sheets, we observe a remarkable inhibition of vortex structures in an intermediate-scale field and a small-scale field but not for a large scale field in DHIT with polymers. The geometric study indicates a strong relevance among the vorticity vector, rate-of-strain tensor, and polymer conformation tensor. Joint probability density functions show that the polymer effect can increase ＂strain generation resistance＂ and ＂vorticity generation resistance＂, i.e., inhibit the generation of vortex sheets and tubes, ultimately leading to turbulence inhibition effects.

Studying turbulence structure near the wall in hydrodynamic flows:An approach based on the Schur decomposition of the velocity gradient tensor

The Schur decomposition of the velocity gradient tensor(VGT)is an alternative to the classical Cauchy-Stokes decomposition into rotation rate and strain rate components.Recently,there have been several strands of work that have employed this decomposition to examine the physics of turbulence dynamics,including approaches that combine the Schur and Cauchy-Stokes formalisms.These are briefly reviewed before the latter approach is set out.This partitions the rotation rate and strain rate tensors into normal/local and non-normal/non-local contributions.We then study the relation between the VGT dynamics and ejection-sweep events in a channel flow boundary-layer.We show that the sweeps in particular exhibit novel behaviour compared with either the other quadrants,or the flow in general,with a much-reduced contribution to the dynamics from the non-normal terms above the viscous sub-layer.In particular,the reduction in the production term that is the interaction between the non-normality and the normal straining reduces in the log-layer as a consequence of an absence of alignment between the non-normal vorticity and the strain rate eigenvectors.There have been early forays into using the Schur transform approach for subgrid-scale modelling in large-eddy simulation(LES)and this would appear to be an exciting way forward.

Dynamics and geometry of developing planar jets based on the invariants of the velocity gradient tensor

Based on the direct numerical simulation （DNS）, the developing planar jets under different initial conditions, e.g., the con- ditions of the exit Reynolds number and the exit mean velocity profile, are investigated. We mainly focus on the characteristics of the invariants of the velocity gradient tensor, which provides insights into the evolution of the dynamics and the geometry of the planar jets along with the flow transition. The results show that the initial flow near the jet exit is strongly predominated by the dissipation over the enstrophy, the flow transition is accompanied by a severe rotation and straining of the flow elements, where the vortex structure evolves faster than the fluid element deformation, in the fully-developed state, the irrotational dissipation is dominant and the most probable geometry of the fluid elements should remain between the biaxial stretching and the axisymmetric stretching. In addition, with a small exit Re and a parabolic profile for the exit mean streamwise velocity, the decay of the mean flow field and the magnitude of the turbulent variables will be strengthened in the process of the flow transition, however, a large exit Re will promote the flow transition to the fully-developed state. The cross-impact between the exit Re and the exit mean velocity profile is also observed in the present study.

Stretching and shearing contamination analysis for Liutex and other vortex identification methods

The newly developed vortex-identification method,Liutex,has provided a new systematic description of the local fluid rotation,which includes scalar,vector,and tensor forms.However,the advantages of Liutex over the other widely used vortexidentification methods such as Q,Δ,λ2,andλci have not been realized.These traditional methods count on shearing and stretching as a part of vortex strength.But,in the real flow,shearing and stretching do not contribute to fluid rotation.In this paper,the decomposition of the velocity gradient tensor is conducted in the Principal Coordinate for uniqueness.Then the contamination effects of stretching and shearing of the traditional methods are investigated and compared with the Liutex method in terms of mathematical analysis and numerical calculations.The results show that the Liutex method is the only method that is not affected by either stretching or shear,as it represents only the local fluid rigid rotation.These results provide supporting evidence that Liutex is the superior method over others.