Hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic energy spectra from large eddy simulations

Abstract

Direct and large eddy simulations of hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic turbulence have been performed in an attempt to isolate artifacts from real and possibly asymptotic features in the energy spectra. It is shown that in a hydrodynamic turbulence simulation with a Smagorinsky subgrid scale model using 5123 mesh points, two important features of the 40963 simulation on the Earth simulator [Y. Kaneda, Phys. Fluids 15, L21 (2003)] are reproduced: a k-0.1 correction to the inertial range with a k-5/3 Kolmogorov slope and the form of the bottleneck just before the dissipative subrange. Furthermore, it is shown that, while a Smagorinsky-type model for the induction equation causes an artificial and unacceptable reduction in the dynamo efficiency, hyper-resistivity yields good agreement with direct simulations. In the large-scale part of the inertial range, an excess of the spectral magnetic energy over the spectral kinetic energy is confirmed. However, a trend toward spectral equipartition at smaller scales in the inertial range can be identified. With magnetic fields, no explicit bottleneck effect is seen. © 2006 American Institute of Physics.