Power and nonpower laws of passive scalar moments convected by isotropic turbulence

Phys Rev Lett. 2015 Sep 11;115(11):114502. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.114502. Epub 2015 Sep 9.

Abstract

The scaling behavior of the moments of two passive scalars that are excited by two different methods and simultaneously convected by the same isotropic steady turbulence at R_{λ}=805 and Sc=0.72 is studied by using direct numerical simulation with N=4096^{3} grid points. The passive scalar θ is excited by a random source that is Gaussian and white in time, and the passive scalar q is excited by the mean uniform scalar gradient. In the inertial convective range, the nth-order moments of the scalar increment δθ(r) do not obey a simple power law, but have the local scaling exponents ξ_{n}^{θ}+β_{n}log(r/r_{*}) with β_{n}>0. In contrast, the local scaling exponents of q have well-developed plateaus and saturate with increasing order. The power law of passive scalar moments is not trivial. The universality of passive scalars is found not in the moments, but in the normalized moments.