Intermittency in the not-so-smooth elastic turbulence

Rahul K. Singh, Prasad Perlekar, Dhrubaditya Mitra and Marco E. Rosti ()
Additional contact information
Rahul K. Singh: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
Prasad Perlekar: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Dhrubaditya Mitra: KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University
Marco E. Rosti: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Elastic turbulence is the chaotic fluid motion resulting from elastic instabilities due to the addition of polymers in small concentrations at very small Reynolds ( $${{{{{{{\rm{Re}}}}}}}}$$ Re ) numbers. Our direct numerical simulations show that elastic turbulence, though a low $${{{{{{{\rm{Re}}}}}}}}$$ Re phenomenon, has more in common with classical, Newtonian turbulence than previously thought. In particular, we find power-law spectra for kinetic energy E(k) ~ k−4 and polymeric energy Ep(k) ~ k−3/2, independent of the Deborah (De) number. This is further supported by calculation of scale-by-scale energy budget which shows a balance between the viscous term and the polymeric term in the momentum equation. In real space, as expected, the velocity field is smooth, i.e., the velocity difference across a length scale r, δu ~ r but, crucially, with a non-trivial sub-leading contribution r3/2 which we extract by using the second difference of velocity. The structure functions of second difference of velocity up to order 6 show clear evidence of intermittency/multifractality. We provide additional evidence in support of this intermittent nature by calculating moments of rate of dissipation of kinetic energy averaged over a ball of radius r, εr, from which we compute the multifractal spectrum.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48460-5 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-48460-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48460-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().