Forecasting small scale dynamics of fluid turbulence using deep neural networks

Abstract

Turbulent flows consist of a wide range of interacting scales. Since the scale range increases as some power of the flow Reynolds number, a faithful simulation of the entire scale range is prohibitively expensive at high Reynolds numbers. The most expensive aspect concerns the small scale motions; thus, major emphasis is placed on understanding and modeling them, taking advantage of their putative universality. In this work, using physics-informed deep learning methods, we present a modeling framework to capture and predict the small scale dynamics of turbulence, via the velocity gradient tensor. The model is based on obtaining functional closures for the pressure Hessian and viscous Laplacian contributions as functions of velocity gradient tensor. This task is accomplished using deep neural networks that are consistent with physical constraints and incorporate Reynolds number dependence explicitly to account for small-scale intermittency. We then utilize a massive direct numerical simulation database, spanning two orders of magnitude in the large-scale Reynolds number, for training and validation. The model learns from low to moderate Reynolds numbers, and successfully predicts velocity gradient statistics at both seen and higher (unseen) Reynolds numbers. The success of our present approach demonstrates the viability of deep learning over traditional modeling approaches in capturing and predicting small scale features of turbulence.

12 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Lagrangian dynamics and statistical geometric structure of turbulence
• Vorticity-strain rate dynamics and the smallest scales of turbulence
• Intermittency of turbulent velocity and scalar fields using 3D local averaging
• A highly scalable particle tracking algorithm using partitioned global address space (PGAS) programming for extreme-scale turbulence simulations
• Lagrangian acceleration in fully developed turbulence and its Eulerian decompositions

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Simulating fluid flows with quantum computing
• Saturation and multifractality of Lagrangian and Eulerian scaling exponents in 3D isotropic turbulence
• Role of pressure in generation of intense velocity gradients in turbulent flows
• Generalization capabilities and robustness of hybrid models grounded in physics compared to purely deep learning models
• Universality of extreme events in turbulent flows