Intermittency of acceleration in isotropic turbulence

Abstract

The intermittency of acceleration is investigated for isotropic turbulence using direct numerical simulation. Intermittently found acceleration of large magnitude always points towards the rotational axis of a vortex filament, indicating that the intermittency of acceleration is associated with the rotational motion of the vortices that causes centripetal acceleration, which is consistent with the reported result for the near-wall turbulence. Furthermore, investigation on movements of such vortex filaments provides some insights into the dynamics of local dissipation, enstrophy and acceleration. Strong dissipation partially covering the edge of a vortex filament shows weak correlation with enstrophy, while it is strongly correlated with acceleration.