Beyond Symmetry: Normality-Based Analysis of Velocity Gradients in Turbulent Flows

Citation

Arun, Rahul (2025) Beyond Symmetry: Normality-Based Analysis of Velocity Gradients in Turbulent Flows. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/3py1-wj85. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:05302025-232647443

Abstract

Small-scale turbulence is a hallmark of countless natural and engineered flows. Its features are often described and modeled using the velocity gradient tensor (VGT), which is conventionally decomposed into the (symmetric) strain-rate tensor and the (antisymmetric) vorticity tensor. Although this symmetry-based decomposition has found use in areas such as vortex identification and closure modeling, it provides limited insight into local flow structure. A more refined description can be obtained by further distinguishing the normal and non-normal parts of the VGT. The resulting normality-based decomposition identifies contributions associated with normal straining (symmetric/normal), rigid rotation (antisymmetric/normal), and pure shearing (non-normal). We use this decomposition to identify flow features that are obscured by symmetry-based analyses yet have significant implications for efforts to understand and model turbulent flows.

We first demonstrate that partitioning the strength of velocity gradients using our normality-based approach can distinguish between different regimes in various turbulent flows. In wall-bounded flows, the near-wall partitioning is dominated by shearing whereas the partitioning far from the wall collapses onto the partitioning associated with isotropic turbulence. In an unbounded vortex ring collision, our analysis distinguishes the initial vortex rings, which have a strong imprint from rigid rotation, from the decaying turbulent cloud produced by their collision, for which the partitioning is similar to that of isotropic turbulence. It also identifies enhanced shear–rotation correlations as a distinctive fingerprint of the elliptic instability during transition, which can be interpreted using relevant geometric features of local streamlines. By deriving algebraic expressions for the partitioning constituents in terms of the invariants of the VGT and an additional parameter, which represents the alignment of shear vorticity with the local rotation axis, we identify a key facet of our analysis that goes beyond previous analyses of the VGT.

We then apply our normality-based framework to filtered velocity gradients in direct and large-eddy simulations of isotropic turbulence. Our analysis enables shear layers, which are associated with shear vorticity, to be distinguished from vortex cores, which are associated with rigid rotation, in a multiscale setting. It reveals that filtering mitigates the relative contribution of shear layers in the subinertial range of the energy cascade. Moreover, it identifies crucial (yet perhaps overlooked) contributions from shear layers to fundamental energy transfer mechanisms, including strain self-amplification, vortex stretching, and backscatter associated with strain–vorticity covariance. The dominant role of shear layers in the backscatter mechanism suggests that they contribute significantly to the bottleneck effect in the subinertial range of the cascade. Our analysis of large-eddy simulation data shows that they also amplify the artificial bottleneck effect produced by an eddy viscosity model in the inertial range. This reflects that the eddy viscosity model mimics an unfiltered direct numerical simulation at a lower Reynolds number. A mixed model can be used to mitigate the artificial bottleneck effect since it more accurately mimics a filtered direct numerical simulation.

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