Bottleneck effect in three-dimensional turbulence simulations

Abstract

At numerical resolutions around $512^3$ and above, three-dimensional energy spectra from turbulence simulations begin to show noticeably shallower spectra than $k^{-5/3}$ near the dissipation wavenumber (`bottleneck effect'). This effect is shown to be significantly weaker in one-dimensional spectra such as those obtained in wind tunnel turbulence. The difference can be understood in terms of the transformation between one-dimensional and three-dimensional energy spectra under the assumption that the turbulent velocity field is isotropic. Transversal and longitudinal energy spectra are similar and can both accurately be computed from the full three-dimensional spectra. Second-order structure functions are less susceptible to the bottleneck effect and may be better suited for inferring the scaling exponent from numerical simulation data.