Lagrangian statistics and flow topology in forced two-dimensional turbulence

Abstract: A study of the relationship between Lagrangian statistics and flow topology in fluid turbulence is presented. The topology is characterized using the Weiss criterion that provides a simplified tool to partition the flow into topologically different regions: elliptic (vortex dominated), hyperbolic (deformation dominated), and intermediate (turbulent background). The flow corresponds to forced two-dimensional Navier-Stokes turbulence in doubly periodic and circular bounded domains with non-slip boundary conditions. In the double periodic domain, the probability density function (pdf) of the Weiss field exhibits a negative skewness consistent with the fact that in periodic domains the flow is dominated by coherent vortex structures. On the other hand, in the circular domain, the elliptic and hyperbolic regions seem to be statistically similar. We follow a Lagrangian approach and obtain the statistics by tracking large ensembles of passively advected tracers. The pdfs of residence time in the topologically different regions are computed using the Lagrangian Weiss field, i.e., the Weiss field computed along the particles' trajectories. In elliptic and hyperbolic regions, the pdfs of the residence time have self-similar algebraic decaying tails. On the other hand, in the intermediate regions the pdf has exponential decaying tails. The conditional (with respect to the flow topology) pdfs of the Lagrangian velocity exhibit Gaussian behavior in the periodic and in the bounded domains. In contrast to the freely decaying turbulence case, the conditional pdfs of the Lagrangian acceleration in forced turbulence show a comparable level of intermittency in the periodic and the bounded domains. The conditional pdfs of the Lagrangian curvature are characterized, in all cases, by self-similar power law behavior with a decay exponent of order -2.