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Wavelet-spectral analysis of droplet-laden isotropic turbulence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Andreas Freund
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
Antonino Ferrante*
Affiliation:
William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: ferrante@aa.washington.edu

Abstract

The spectrum of turbulence kinetic energy for homogeneous turbulence is generally computed using the Fourier transform of the velocity field from physical three-dimensional space to wavenumber $k$. This analysis works well for single-phase homogeneous turbulent flows. In the case of multiphase turbulent flows, instead, the velocity field is non-smooth at the interface between the carrier fluid and the dispersed phase; thus, the energy spectra computed via Fourier transform exhibit spurious oscillations at high wavenumbers. An alternative definition of the spectrum uses the wavelet transform, which can handle discontinuities locally without affecting the entire spectrum while additionally preserving spatial information about the field. In this work, we propose using the wavelet energy spectrum to study multiphase turbulent flows. Also, we propose a new decomposition of the wavelet energy spectrum into three contributions corresponding to the carrier phase, droplets and interaction between the two. Lastly, we apply the new wavelet-decomposition tools in analysing the direct numerical simulation data of droplet-laden decaying isotropic turbulence (in absence of gravity) of Dodd & Ferrante (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 806, 2016, pp. 356–412). Our results show that, in comparison to the spectrum of the single-phase case, the droplets (i) do not affect the carrier-phase energy spectrum at high wavenumbers ($k_{m}/k_{min}\geqslant 128$), (ii) increase the energy spectrum at high wavenumbers ($k_{m}/k_{min}\geqslant 256$) by increasing the interaction energy spectrum at these wavenumbers and (iii) decrease the energy at low wavenumbers ($k_{m}/k_{min}\leqslant 16$) by increasing the dissipation rate at these wavenumbers.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Copyright
© 2019 Cambridge University Press 
Figure 0

Figure 1.Fourier spectra of TKE for the DNS cases of Dodd & Ferrante (2016). Dashed lines represent droplet-free cases and solid lines droplet-laden cases.

Figure 1

Figure 2.Velocity profiles along a line in the domain show sharp jumps at the interfaces for droplet-laden case C.

Figure 2

Figure 3.Comparison of the Haar wavelet and the sym4 wavelet used in this study.

Figure 3

Figure 4.Example of decomposition ${\mathcal{D}}^{(m)}={\mathcal{D}}_{C}^{(m)}\cup {\mathcal{D}}_{D}^{(m)}\cup {\mathcal{D}}_{I}^{(m)}$ for case C with $k_{m}/k_{min}=256$ and $512$ ($m=2$ and $1$) in a subregion of the $x$–$y$ plane for $z=0.5$.

Figure 4

Figure 5.(a) Total wavelet spectra $\widetilde{E}(k_{m})$ (2.6). (b) Carrier-phase wavelet spectra $\widetilde{E}_{C}(k_{m})$ (2.15). (c) Interaction wavelet spectra $\widetilde{E}_{I}(k_{m})$ (2.17).

Figure 5

Figure 6.Comparison of local wavelet energy at $k_{m}/k_{min}=512$ and local kinetic energy for cases A and C in a subregion of the $x$–$y$ plane at $z=0.5$.

Figure 6

Figure 7.Viscous-dissipation rate $\bar{\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}}(r)$ averaged over points at distance $r$ from the nearest droplet interface, normalized by the dissipation rate $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}_{1}$ at $t=1$. The dashed line represents the normalized dissipation rate $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}_{1}$ at $t=3.5$ for the droplet-free case.

Figure 7

Figure 8.Carrier-phase energy-transfer rate $\widetilde{T}_{C}(k_{m})$ (2.11).

Figure 8

Figure 9.Dashed lines: total viscous-dissipation rate $\widetilde{V}(k_{m})$ (2.12) (shown only for $k_{m}/k_{min}\leqslant 64$). Solid lines: carrier-phase viscous-dissipation rate $\widetilde{V}_{C}(k_{m})$ (2.12).

Figure 9

Figure 10.Schematic of results (i)–(iii).