A Constitutive Equation of Turbulence

Abstract

Even though applications of direct numerical simulations are on the rise, today the most usual method to solve turbulence problems is still to apply a closure scheme of a defined order. It is not the case that a rising order of a turbulence model is always related to a quality improvement. Even more, a conceptual advantage of applying a lowest order turbulence model is that it represents the analogous method to the procedure of introducing a constitutive equation which has brought success to many other areas of physics. First order turbulence models were developed in the 1920s and today seem to be outdated by newer and more sophisticated mathematical-physical closure schemes. However, with the new knowledge of fractal geometry and fractional dynamics, it is worthwhile to step back and reinvestigate these lowest order models. As a result of this and simultaneously introducing generalizations by multiscale analysis, the first order, nonlinear, nonlocal, and fractional Difference-Quotient Turbulence Model (DQTM) was developed. In this partial review article of work performed by the authors, by theoretical considerations and its applications to turbulent flow problems, evidence is given that the DQTM is the missing (apparent) constitutive equation of turbulent shear flows.

Keywords

• Newton’s law of viscosity
• Reynolds shear stress
• Kraichnan’s direct interaction approximation
• Boussinesq’s closure approximation
• Prandtl’s mixing-length model
• difference-quotient turbulence model