Viscous tilting and production of vorticity in homogeneous turbulence

Abstract

Viscous depletion of vorticity is an essential and well known property of turbulent flows, balancing, in the mean, the net vorticity production associated with the vortex stretching mechanism. In this letter we however demonstrate that viscous effects are not restricted to a mere destruction process, but play a more complex role in vorticity dynamics that is as important as vortex stretching. Based on results from particle tracking experiments (3D-PTV) and direct numerical simulation (DNS) of homogeneous and quasi isotropic turbulence, we show that the viscous term in the vorticity equation can also locally induce production of vorticity and changes of its orientation (viscous tilting).

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Energy transfer from large to small scales in turbulence by multi-scale nonlinear strain and vorticity interactions
• Vortex stretching and enstrophy production in high Reynolds number turbulence
• On the role of vorticity stretching and strain self-amplification in the turbulence energy cascade
• Lagrangian time correlations of vorticity alignments in isotropic turbulence: observations and model predictions