arXiv subjects

Katepalli R. Sreenivasan

Publications and source records attributed to Katepalli R. Sreenivasan.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Convective mesoscale turbulence at very low Prandtl numbers

Horizontally extended turbulent convection, termed mesoscale convection in natural systems, remains a challenge to investigate in both experiments and simulations. This is particularly so for very low molecular Prandtl numbers as in stellar convection and in Earth's outer core. The present study reports three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection in square boxes of side length $L$ and height $H$ with the aspect ratio $Γ=L/H$ of 25, for Prandtl numbers that span almost 4 orders of magnitude, $10^{-3}\le Pr \le 7$, and Rayleigh numbers $10^5 \le Ra \le 10^7$, obtained by massively parallel computations on grids of up to $5.36\times 10^{11}$ points. The low end of this $Pr$-range cannot be accessed in controlled laboratory measurements. We report the essential properties of the flow and their trends with Rayleigh and Prandtl numbers, in particular the global transport of momentum and heat -- the latter decomposed into convective and diffusive contributions -- across the convection layer, mean vertical profiles of the temperature and temperature fluctuations, and the kinetic energy and thermal dissipation rates. We also explore the degree to which the turbulence in the bulk of the convection layer resembles classical homogeneous and isotropic turbulence in terms of spectra, increment moments, and dissipative anomaly, and find close similarities. Finally, we show that a characteristic scale on the order of the mesoscale seems to saturate to a wavelength of $λ\gtrsim 3H$ for $Pr\lesssim 0.005$. We briefly discuss possible implications of these results for the development of subgrid scale parameterization of turbulent convection.

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arXiv2022

Scaling of acceleration statistics in high Reynolds number turbulence

The scaling of acceleration statistics in turbulence is examined by combining data from the literature with new data from well-resolved direct numerical simulations of isotropic turbulence, significantly extending the Reynolds number range. The acceleration variance at higher Reynolds numbers departs from previous predictions based on multifractal models, which characterize Lagrangian intermittency as a naive extension of Eulerian intermittency. The disagreement is even more prominent for higher-order moments of the acceleration. Instead, starting from a known exact relation, we relate the scaling of acceleration variance to that of Eulerian fourth-order velocity gradient and velocity increment statistics. This prediction is in excellent agreement with the variance data. Our work highlights the need for models that consider Lagrangian intermittency independent of the Eulerian counterpart.

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arXiv2022

Intermittency of turbulent velocity and scalar fields using 3D local averaging

An efficient approach for extracting 3D local averages in spherical subdomains is proposed and applied to study the intermittency of small-scale velocity and scalar fields in direct numerical simulations of isotropic turbulence. We focus on the inertial-range scaling exponents of locally averaged energy dissipation rate, enstrophy and scalar dissipation rate corresponding to the mixing of a passive scalar $θ$ in the presence of a uniform mean gradient. The Taylor-scale Reynolds number $R_λ$ goes up to $1300$, and the Schmidt number $Sc$ up to $512$ (albeit at smaller $R_λ$). The intermittency exponent of the energy dissipation rate is $μ\approx 0.23$, whereas that of enstrophy is slightly larger; trends with $R_λ$ suggest that this will be the case even at extremely large $R_λ$. The intermittency exponent of the scalar dissipation rate is $μ_θ\approx 0.35$ for $Sc=1$. These findings are in essential agreement with previously reported results in the literature. We further show that $μ_θ$ decreases monotonically with increasing $Sc$, either as $1/\log Sc$ or a weak power law, suggesting that $μ_θ\to 0$ as $Sc \to \infty$, reaffirming recent results on the breakdown of scalar dissipation anomaly in this limit.

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arXiv2021

Small-scale isotropy and ramp-cliff structures in scalar turbulence

Passive scalars advected by three-dimensional Navier-Stokes turbulence exhibit a fundamental anomaly in odd-order moments because of the characteristic ramp-cliff structures, violating small-scale isotropy. We use data from direct numerical simulations with grid resolution of up to $8192^3$ at high Péclet numbers to understand this anomaly as the scalar diffusivity, $D$, diminishes, or as the Schmidt number, $Sc = ν/D$, increases; here $ν$ is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid. The microscale Reynolds number varies from 140 to 650 and $Sc$ varies from 1 to 512. A simple model for the ramp-cliff structures is shown to characterize the scalar derivative statistics extremely well. It accurately captures how the small-scale isotropy is restored in the large-$Sc$ limit, and additionally suggests a slight correction to the Batchelor length scale as the relevant smallest scale in the scalar field.

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arXiv2021

Turbulence is an ineffective mixer when Schmidt numbers are large

We solve the advection-diffusion equation for a stochastically stationary passive scalar $θ$, in conjunction with forced 3D Navier-Stokes equations, using direct numerical simulations in periodic domains of various sizes, the largest being $8192^3$. The Taylor-scale Reynolds number varies in the range $140-650$ and the Schmidt number $Sc \equiv ν/D$ in the range $1-512$, where $ν$ is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid and $D$ is the molecular diffusivity of $θ$. Our results show that turbulence becomes an ineffective mixer when $Sc$ is large. First, the mean scalar dissipation rate $\langle χ\rangle = 2D \langle |\nabla θ|^2\rangle$, when suitably non-dimensionalized, decreases as $1/\log Sc$. Second, 1D cuts through the scalar field indicate increasing density of sharp fronts on larger scales, oscillating with large excursions leading to reduced mixing, and additionally suggesting weakening of scalar variance flux across the scales. The scaling exponents of the scalar structure functions in the inertial-convective range appear to saturate with respect to the moment order and the saturation exponent approaches unity as $Sc$ increases, qualitatively consistent with 1D cuts of the scalar.

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arXiv2021

Non-Boussinesq convection at low Prandtl numbers relevant to the Sun

Convection in the Sun occurs at Rayleigh numbers, $Ra$, as high as $10^{22}$, molecular Prandtl numbers, $Pr$, as low as $10^{-6}$, under conditions that are far from satisfying the Oberbeck-Boussinesq (OB) idealization. The effects of these extreme circumstances on turbulent heat transport are unknown, and no comparable conditions exist on Earth. Our goal is to understand how these effects scale (since we cannot yet replicate the Sun's conditions faithfully). We study thermal convection by using direct numerical simulations, and determine the variation with respect to $Pr$, to values as low as $10^{-4}$, of the turbulent Prandtl number, $Pr_t$, which is the ratio of turbulent viscosity to thermal diffusivity. The simulations are primarily two-dimensional but we draw upon some three-dimensional results as well. We focus on non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq (NOB) conditions of a certain type, but also study OB convection for comparison. The OB simulations are performed in a rectangular box of aspect ratio 2 by varying $Pr$ from $O(10)$ to $10^{-4}$ at fixed Grashof number $Gr \equiv Ra/Pr = 10^9$. The NOB simulations are done in the same box by letting only the thermal diffusivity depend on the temperature. Here, the Rayleigh number is fixed at the top boundary while the mean $Pr$ varies in the bulk from 0.07 to $5 \times 10^{-4}$. The three-dimensional simulations are performed in a box of aspect ratio 25 at a fixed Rayleigh number of $10^5$, and $0.005 \leq Pr \leq 7$. The principal finding is that $Pr_t$ increases with decreasing $Pr$ in both OB and NOB convection: $Pr_t \sim Pr^{-0.3}$ for OB convection and $Pr_t \sim Pr^{-1}$ for the NOB case. The $Pr_t$-dependence for the NOB case especially suggests that convective flows in the astrophysical settings behave effectively as in high-Prandtl-number turbulence.

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arXiv2021

The area rule for circulation in three-dimensional turbulence

An important idea underlying a plausible dynamical theory of circulation in three-dimensional turbulence is the so-called Area Rule, according to which the probability density function (PDF) of the circulation around closed loops depends only on the minimal area of the loop, not its shape. We assess the robustness of the Area Rule, for both planar and non-planar loops, using high-resolution data from Direct Numerical Simulations. For planar loops, the circulation moments for rectangular shapes match those for the square with only small differences, these differences being larger when the aspect ratio is further from unity, and when the moment-order increases. The differences do not exceed about $5\%$ for any condition examined here. The aspect-ratio dependence observed for the second-order moment are indistinguishable from results for the Gaussian Random Field (GRF) with the same two-point correlation function (for which the results are order-independent by construction). When normalized by the SD of the PDF, the aspect ratio dependence is even smaller $(< 2\%)$ but does not vanish unlike for the GRF. We obtain circulation statistics around minimal area loops in three dimensions and compare them to those of a planar loop circumscribing equivalent areas, and we find that circulation statistics match in the two cases only when normalized by an internal variable such as the SD. This work highlights the hitherto unknown connection between minimal surfaces and turbulence.

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arXiv2021

Convective heat transport in slender cells is close to that in wider cells at high Rayleigh and Prandtl numbers

Direct numerical simulations of turbulent convection at high Rayleigh numbers in large aspect ratio cells are challenging because of the prohibitive computational resources required. One can achieve high Rayleigh numbers at affordable costs for low aspect ratios, but the effect of small aspect ratio remains to be understood fully. In this work, we explore integral quantities in convection in a cell with the small aspect ratio of 0.1 by varying both the Rayleigh and Prandtl numbers systematically. We find that the heat transport in this flow is within 10\% of that in cells with large aspect ratios for high enough Rayleigh numbers and for Prandtl numbers larger than unity. For low Prandtl numbers, the increase of the heat transport is steeper for low aspect ratios, approaching that in large aspect ratios as the Prandtl number increases. Further, the global momentum transport, quantified by the Reynolds number, is reduced for all Prandtl numbers, presumably because of the larger volume of flow affected by the friction from sidewalls, compared to that in cells of larger aspect ratio.

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arXiv2021

Oscillations Modulating Power Law Exponents in Isotropic Turbulence: Comparison of Experiments with Simulations

Inertial-range features of turbulence are investigated using data from experimental measurements of grid turbulence and direct numerical simulations of isotropic turbulence simulated in a periodic box, both at the Taylor-scale Reynolds number $R_λ\sim 1000$. In particular, oscillations modulating the power-law scaling in the inertial range are examined for structure functions up to sixth order moments. The oscillations in exponent ratios decrease with increasing sample size in simulations though, in experiments, they survive at a low value of $4$ parts in $1000$ even after massive averaging. The two data sets are consistent in their intermittent character but differ in small but observable respects. Neither the scaling exponents themselves nor all the viscous effects are consistently reproduced by existing models of intermittency.

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arXiv2021

Analyzing supergranular power spectra using helioseismic normal-mode coupling

Normal-mode coupling is a technique applied to probe the solar interior using surface observations of oscillations. The technique, which is straightforward to implement, makes more use of the seismic information in the wavefield than other comparable local imaging techniques and therefore has the potential to significantly improve current capabilities. Here, we examine supergranulation power spectra using mode-coupling analyses of intermediate-to-high-degree modes by invoking a Cartesian-geometric description of wave propagation under the assumption that the localized patches are much smaller in size than the solar radius. We extract the supergranular power spectrum and compare the results with prior helioseismic studies. Measurements of the dispersion relation and life times of supergranulation, obtained using near surface modes (f and p$_1$), are in accord with the literature. We show that the cross-coupling between the p$_2$ and p$_3$ acoustic modes, which are capable of probing greater depths, are also sensitive to supergranulation.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2020

Non-Boussinesq low-Prandtl number convection with a temperature-dependent thermal diffusivity

In an attempt to understand the role of the strong radial dependence of thermal diffusivity on the properties of convection in sun-like stars, we mimic that effect in non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq (NOB) convection in a horizontally-extended rectangular domain (aspect ratio 16), by allowing the thermal diffusivity $κ$ to increase with the temperature (as in the case of stars). Direct numerical simulations (i.e., numerical solutions of the governing equations by resolving up to the smallest scales without requiring any modeling) show that, in comparison with Oberbeck-Boussinesq (OB) simulations (two of which we perform for comparison purposes), the symmetry of the temperature field about the mid-horizontal plane is broken, whereas the velocity and heat flux profiles remain essentially symmetric. Our choice of $κ(T)$, which resembles the variation in stars, results in the temperature field that loses its fine structures towards the hotter part of the computational domain, but the characteristic large scale of the turbulent thermal `superstructures', which are structures whose size is typically larger than the depth of the convection domain, continue to be largely independent of the depth.

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arXiv2020

Solar east-west flow correlations that persist for months at low latitudes are dominated by active region inflows

Context: Giant-cell convection is believed to be an important component of solar dynamics. For example, it is expected to play a crucial role in maintaining the Sun's differential rotation. Aims: We re-examine early reports of giant convective cells detected using correlation analysis of Dopplergrams. We extend this analysis using 19 years of space and ground-based observations of near-surface horizontal flows. Method: Flow maps are derived through local correlation tracking of granules and helioseismic ring-diagram analysis. We compute temporal auto-correlation functions of the east-west flows at fixed latitude. Results: Correlations in the east-west velocity can be clearly seen up to five rotation periods. The signal consists of features with longitudinal wavenumbers up to m=9 at low latitudes. Comparison with magnetic images indicates that these flow features are associated with magnetic activity. The signal is not seen above the noise level during solar minimum. Conclusions: Our results show that the long-term correlations in east-west flows at low latitudes are dominantly due to inflows into active regions and not to giant convective cells.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2020

Dissipation range of the energy spectrum in high Reynolds number turbulence

We seek to understand the kinetic energy spectrum in the dissipation range of fully developed turbulence. The data are obtained by direct numerical simulations (DNS) of forced Navier-Stokes equations in a periodic domain, for Taylor-scale Reynolds numbers up to $R_λ=650$, with excellent small-scale resolution of $k_{max}η\approx 6$ for all cases (and additionally at $R_λ=1300$ with $k_{max}η\approx3$), where $k_{max}$ is the maximum resolved wavenumber and $η$ is the Kolmogorov length scale. We find that, for a limited range of wavenumbers $k$ past the bottleneck in the range $0.1 \lesssim kη\lesssim0.5$, the spectra for all $R_λ$ display a universal stretched exponential behavior of the form $\exp(-k^{2/3})$, in rough accordance with recent theoretical predictions. The stretched exponential fit in the near dissipation range $1 \lesssim kη\lesssim 4$ does not possess a unique exponent, which decreases with increasing $R_λ$. This region can be regarded as a crossover between the stretched exponential behavior and the far dissipation range $kη> 6$, in which analytical arguments as well as DNS data with superfine resolution (S. Khurshid et al., Phys.~Rev.~Fluids 3, 082601, 2018) suggest a $\exp(-k)$ dependence. We remark on the connection to the multifractal model which hypothesizes a pseudo-algebraic law.

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arXiv2020

A general formulation for computing spherical helioseismic sensitivity kernels while incorporating systematical effects

As helioseismology matures and turns into a precision science, modeling finite-frequency, geometric and systematical effects is becoming increasingly important. Here we introduce a general formulation for treating perturbations of arbitrary tensor rank in spherical geometry using fundamental ideas of quantum mechanics and their extensions in geophysics. We include line-of-sight projections and center-to-limb differences in line-formation heights in our analysis. We demonstrate the technique by computing a travel-time sensitivity kernel for sound-speed perturbations. The analysis produces the spherical harmonic coefficients of the sensitivity kernels, which leads to better-posed and computationally efficient inverse problems.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2020

Quantum Computation of Fluid Dynamics

Studies of strongly nonlinear dynamical systems such as turbulent flows call for superior computational prowess. With the advent of quantum computing, a plethora of quantum algorithms have demonstrated, both theoretically and experimentally, more powerful computational possibilities than their classical counterparts. Starting with a brief introduction to quantum computing, we will distill a few key tools and algorithms from the huge spectrum of methods available, and evaluate possible approaches of quantum computing in fluid dynamics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Detection of exomoons in simulated light curves with a regularized convolutional neural network

Many moons have been detected around planets in our Solar System, but none has been detected unambiguously around any of the confirmed extrasolar planets. We test the feasibility of a supervised convolutional neural network to classify photometric transit light curves of planet-host stars and identify exomoon transits, while avoiding false positives caused by stellar variability or instrumental noise. Convolutional neural networks are known to have contributed to improving the accuracy of classification tasks. The network optimization is typically performed without studying the effect of noise on the training process. Here we design and optimize a 1D convolutional neural network to classify photometric transit light curves. We regularize the network by the total variation loss in order to remove unwanted variations in the data features. Using numerical experiments, we demonstrate the benefits of our network, which produces results comparable to or better than the standard network solutions. Most importantly, our network clearly outperforms a classical method used in exoplanet science to identify moon-like signals. Thus the proposed network is a promising approach for analyzing real transit light curves in the future.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2020

Scaling exponents saturate in three-dimensional isotropic turbulence

From a database of direct numerical simulations of homogeneous and isotropic turbulence, generated in periodic boxes of various sizes, we extract the spherically symmetric part of moments of velocity increments and first verify the following (somewhat contested) results: the $4/5$-ths law holds in an intermediate range of scales and that the second order exponent over the same range of scales is {\it{anomalous}}, departing from the self-similar value of $2/3$ and approaching a constant of $0.72$ at high Reynolds numbers. We compare with some typical theories the dependence of longitudinal exponents as well as their derivatives with respect to the moment order $n$, and estimate the most probable value of the Hölder exponent. We demonstrate that the transverse scaling exponents saturate for large $n$, and trace this trend to the presence of large localized jumps in the signal. The saturation value of about $2$ at the highest Reynolds number suggests, when interpreted in the spirit of fractals, the presence of vortex sheets rather than more complex singularities. In general, the scaling concept in hydrodynamic turbulence appears to be more complex than even the multifractal description.

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arXiv2019

Fractal iso-level sets in high-Reynolds-number scalar turbulence

We study the fractal scaling of iso-levels sets of a passive scalar mixed by three-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic turbulence at high Reynolds numbers. The Schmidt number is unity. A fractal box-counting dimension $D_F$ can be obtained for iso-levels below about $3$ standard deviations of the scalar fluctuation on either side of its mean value. The dimension varies systematically with the iso-level, with a maximum of about $8/3$ for the iso-level at the mean; this maximum dimension also follows as an upper bound from the geometric measure theory. We interpret this result to mean that mixing in turbulence is always incomplete. A unique box-counting dimension for all iso-levels results when we consider the spatial support of the steep cliffs of the scalar conditioned on local strain; that unique dimension is about $4/3$.

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