High order Lagrangian velocity statistics in turbulence

Haitao Xu (1) , Mickaël Bourgoin (2) , Nicholas T. Ouellette (1) , Eberhard Bodenschatz (1, 3)

1 LASSP - Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics [Ithaca]
2 LEGI - Laboratoire des Écoulements Géophysiques et Industriels [Grenoble]
3 MPIDS - Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

We report measurements of the Lagrangian velocity structure functions of orders 1 through 10 in a high Reynolds number (Taylor microscale Reynolds numbers of up to R-lambda=815) turbulence experiment. Passive tracer particles are tracked optically in three dimensions and in time, and velocities are calculated from the particle tracks. The structure function anomalous scaling exponents are measured both directly and using extended self-similarity and are found to be more intermittent than their Eulerian counterparts. Classical Kolmogorov inertial range scaling is also found for all structure function orders at times that trend downward as the order increases. The temporal shift of this classical scaling behavior is observed to saturate as the structure function order increases at times shorter than the Kolmogorov time scale.

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Haitao Xu, Mickaël Bourgoin, Nicholas T. Ouellette, Eberhard Bodenschatz. High order Lagrangian velocity statistics in turbulence. Physical Review Letters, 2006, 96 (2), pp.024503. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.024503⟩. ⟨hal-00492364⟩