On the transport equation for probability density functions of turbulent vorticity fields

Abstract

Vorticity random fields of turbulent flows (modelled over the vorticity equation with random initial data for example) are singled out as the main dynamic variables for the description of turbulence, and the evolution equation of the probability density function (PDF) of the vorticity field has been obtained. This PDF evolution equation is a mixed type partial differential equation (PDE) of second order which depends only on the conditional mean (which is a first-order statistics) of the underlying turbulent flow. This is in contrast with Reynolds mean flow equation which relies on a quadratic statistics. The PDF PDE may provide new closure schemes based on the first-order conditional statistics, and some of them will be described in the paper. We should mention that the PDF equation is interesting by its own and is worthy of study as a PDE of second order.