Vorticity Evolution near the Turbulent/Non-Turbulent Interfaces in Free-Shear Flows

Abstract

Vorticity dynamics is studied near the interface between turbulent and non-turbulent flows, so called a turbulent/non-turbulent (T/NT) interface, with the direct numerical simulations of planar jets and mixing layers. The statistics near the interface confirm that the T/NT interface consists of two layers: viscous superlayer and turbulent sublayer. The vis-cous superlayer with the thickness of 4 times of Kolmogorov length-scale is found at the outer edge of the interface, where the vorticity grows with the viscous diffusion. In the turbulent sublayer between the viscous superlayer and the turbulent region, the strain-vorticity interaction becomes active. In the Lagrangian statistics for the fluid particles, the different scaling laws appear in the entrained particle movement depending on the layer: a ballistic evolution in the viscous superlayer and the Richardson-like scaling for relative dispersion in the turbulent sublayer. These scalings indicate that the change in the particle position in the viscous superlayer is governed by the outward viscous diffusion of vorticity whereas it is governed by the inviscid small-scale eddy motions in the turbulent sublayer. The flow topology on the particle path line shows that the fluid being entrained tends to circumvent the core region of intense eddies near the T/NT interface.