Disentangling Scaling Properties in Anisotropic and Inhomogeneous Turbulence

Abstract

We address scaling in inhomogeneous and anisotropic turbulent flows by decomposing structure functions into their irreducible representation of the SO(3) symmetry group which are designated by $j,m$ indices. Employing simulations of channel flows with Re${}_{\lambda }\approx 70$ we demonstrate that different components characterized by different $j$ display different scaling exponents, but for a given $j$ these remain the same at different distances from the wall. The $j=0$ exponent agrees extremely well with high Re measurements of the scaling exponents, demonstrating the vitality of the SO(3) decomposition.

4 pages