Self-similar scaling in decaying numerical turbulence

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2004 May;69(5 Pt 2):056303. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.69.056303. Epub 2004 May 18.

Abstract

Decaying turbulence is studied numerically using as initial condition a random flow whose shell-integrated energy spectrum increases with wave number k like k(q). Alternatively, initial conditions are generated from a driven turbulence simulation by simply stopping the driving. It is known that the dependence of the decaying energy spectrum on wave number, time, and viscosity can be collapsed onto a unique scaling function that depends only on two parameters. This is confirmed using three-dimensional simulations and the dependence of the scaling function on its two arguments is determined.