Effects of forcing in three-dimensional turbulent flows.
We present the results of a numerical investigation of three-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic turbulence, stirred by a random forcing with a power-law spectrum, E(f)(k) approximately k(3-y). Numerical simulations are performed at different resolutions up to 512(3). We show that at varying the spectrum slope y, small-scale turbulent fluctuations change from a forcing independent to a forcing dominated statistics. We argue that the critical value separating the two behaviors, in three dimensions, is y(c)=4. When the statistics is forcing dominated, for y<y(c), we find dimensional scaling, i.e., intermittency is vanishingly small. On the other hand, for y>y(c), we find the same anomalous scaling measured in flows forced only at large scales. We connect these results with the issue of universality in turbulent flows.
Biferale
Luca
L
Dipartimento di Fisica, Università Tor Vergata, Via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, I-00133 Roma, Italy.
Lanotte
Alessandra S
AS
Toschi
Federico
F