Formation of turbulence via an interaction potential

Abstract

In a recent work, we proposed a hypothesis that the turbulence in gases could be produced by particles interacting via a potential - for example, the interatomic potential at short ranges, and the electrostatic potential at long ranges. Here, we examine the proposed mechanics of turbulence formation in a simple model of two particles, which interact solely via a potential. Following the kinetic theory approach, we derive a hierarchy of the velocity moment transport equations, and then truncate it via a novel closure based on the high Reynolds number condition. While standard closures of the velocity moment hierarchy of the Boltzmann equation lead to the compressible Euler and Navier-Stokes systems of equations, our closure leads to a transport equation for the velocity alone, which is driven by the potential forcing. Starting from a large scale laminar shear flow, we numerically simulate the solutions of our velocity transport equation for the electrostatic, gravity, Thomas-Fermi and Lennard-Jones potentials, as well as the Vlasov-type large scale mean field potential. In all studied scenarios, the time-averaged Fourier spectra of the kinetic energy clearly exhibit Kolmogorov's "five-thirds" power decay rate.