Small-scale anisotropy in Lagrangian turbulence

Nicholas T. Ouellette (1) , Haitao Xu (1) , Mickaël Bourgoin (2) , 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 second-order Lagrangian structure function and the Lagrangian velocity spectrum in an intensely turbulent laboratory flow. We find that the asymmetries of the large-scale flow are reflected in the small-scale statistics. In addition, we present new measurements of the Lagrangian structure function scaling constant C-0, which is of central importance to stochastic turbulence models as well as to the understanding of turbulent pair dispersion and scalar mixing. The scaling of C-0 with the turbulence level is also investigated, and found to be in agreement with an existing model.

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

Nicholas T. Ouellette, Haitao Xu, Mickaël Bourgoin, Eberhard Bodenschatz. Small-scale anisotropy in Lagrangian turbulence. New Journal of Physics, 2006, 8, pp.102. ⟨10.1088/1367-2630/8/6/102⟩. ⟨hal-00492356⟩