From limited observations to the state of turbulence: Fundamental difficulties of flow reconstruction

Abstract

Numerical simulations of turbulence provide non-intrusive access to all the resolved scales, although they often invoke idealizations that can compromise realism. In contrast, experimental measurements probe the true flow with lesser idealizations, but they continually contend with spatio-temporal sensor resolution. Assimilating observations directly in simulations can combine the benefits of both approaches. The problem is expressed in variational form, where we seek a Navier-Stokes solution that minimizes a cost function defined in terms of the deviation of numerical predictions and observations. In this framework, measurements are no longer a mere record of the instantaneous, local quantity, but rather an encoding of the antecedent flow events that we aim to decode using the governing equations. We examine three state estimation problems: In circular Couette flow, starting from wall stress data, we accurately reconstruct the nonlinear saturated wavy Taylor vortices. Through a discussion of transition to chaos in a Lorenz system, we highlight the challenge of navigating the landscape of the cost function, and how the landscape can be modified by sensor placement. In turbulent channel flow, the Taylor microscale and Lyapunov timescale place restrictions on the resolution of observations that ensure an accurate reconstruction of all the scales. The notion of domain of dependence of an observation is introduced and related to the Hessian of the cost function. For measurements of wall stress, the eigenspectrum of the Hessian demonstrates the sensitivity of short-time observations to the near-wall turbulent scales and to outer large scales. At long times, backward chaos obfuscates the interpretation of the data: observations that are infinitesimally close may be traced back to entirely different earlier flow states--a dual to the more common butterfly effect for forward trajectories.