Energy Cascade: Difference between revisions

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In a fully turbulent flow, at high Re, we have large eddies breaking up into smaller ones, and those break up as well until �finally the eddies are so small that they are dissipated by viscosity. Clearly the scale at which dissipation occurs depends on the viscosity. A poem by Lewis Fry Richardson:
In a fully turbulent flow, at high Re, we have large eddies breaking up into smaller ones, and those break up as well until �finally the eddies are so small that they are dissipated by viscosity. Clearly the scale at which dissipation occurs depends on the viscosity. A poem by Lewis Fry Richardson:


Big whirls have little whirls,
#Big whirls have little whirls,
Which feed on their velocity,
#Which feed on their velocity,
And little whirls have lesser whirls,
#And little whirls have lesser whirls,
and so on to viscosity.
#and so on to viscosity.


See Kolmogorov's 5/3 law for the energy in terms of wavenumber in the inertial subrange of wavenumbers before dissipation occurs.
See Kolmogorov's 5/3 law for the energy in terms of wavenumber in the inertial subrange of wavenumbers before dissipation occurs.

Revision as of 11:42, 21 May 2015

In a fully turbulent flow, at high Re, we have large eddies breaking up into smaller ones, and those break up as well until �finally the eddies are so small that they are dissipated by viscosity. Clearly the scale at which dissipation occurs depends on the viscosity. A poem by Lewis Fry Richardson:

  1. Big whirls have little whirls,
  2. Which feed on their velocity,
  3. And little whirls have lesser whirls,
  4. and so on to viscosity.

See Kolmogorov's 5/3 law for the energy in terms of wavenumber in the inertial subrange of wavenumbers before dissipation occurs.