Different intermittency for longitudinal and transversal turbulent fluctuations

Abstract

Scaling exponents of the longitudinal and transversal velocity structure functions in numerical Navier-Stokes turbulence simulations with Taylor-Reynolds numbers up to $\rel = 110$ are determined by the extended self similarity method. We find significant differences in the degree of intermittency: For the sixth moments the scaling corrections to the classical Kolmogorov expectations are $δξ_6^L= -0.21 \pm 0.01$ and $\dx_6^T= -0.43 \pm 0.01$, respectively, independent of $\rel$. Also the generalized extended self similarity exponents $ρ_{p,q} = \dx_p/\dx_q$ differ significantly for the longitudinal and transversal structure functions. Within the She-Leveque model this means that longitudinal and transversal fluctuations obey different types of hierarchies of the moments. Moreover, the She-Leveque model hierarchy parameters $β^L $ and $β^T$ show small but significant dependences on the order of the moment.

20 pages, 10 eps-figures, to appear in Physics of Fluids, December 1997