Dissipation range of the energy spectrum in high Reynolds number turbulence

Abstract

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 $R_\lambda=650$, with excellent small-scale resolution of $k_{max}\eta \approx 6$ for all cases (and additionally at $R_\lambda=1300$ with $k_{max}\eta\approx3$), where $k_{max}$ is the maximum resolved wavenumber and $\eta$ is the Kolmogorov length scale. We find that, for a limited range of wavenumbers $k$ past the bottleneck in the range $0.1 \lesssim k\eta \lesssim0.5$, the spectra for all $R_\lambda$ 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 $1 \lesssim k\eta \lesssim 4$ does not possess a unique exponent, which decreases with increasing $R_\lambda$. This region can be regarded as a crossover between the stretched exponential behavior and the far dissipation range $k\eta > 6$, 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.