The Early Days and Rise of Turbulence Simulation

Abstract

This review highlights major developments and milestones during the early days of numerical simulation of turbulent flows and its use to increase our understanding of turbulence phenomena. The period covered starts with the first simulations of decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence in 1971–1972 and ends about 25 years later. Some earlier history of the progress in weather prediction is included if relevant. Only direct simulation, in which all scales of turbulence are accounted for explicitly, and large-eddy simulation, in which the effect of the smaller scales is modeled, are discussed. The method by which all scales are modeled, Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes, is not covered.