Three dimensional branching pipe flows for optimal scalar transport between walls

Abstract: We consider the problem of "wall-to-wall optimal transport" in which we attempt to maximize the transport of a passive temperature field between hot and cold plates. Specifically, we optimize the choice of the divergence-free velocity field in the advection-diffusion equation subject to an enstrophy constraint (which can be understood as a constraint on the power required to generate the flow). Previous work established an a priori upper bound on the transport, scaling as the 1/3-power of the flow's enstrophy. Recently, Tobasco & Doering (Phys. Rev. Lett. vol.118, 2017, p.264502}) and Doering & Tobasco (Comm. Pure Appl. Math. vol.72, 2019, p.2385--2448}) constructed self-similar two-dimensional steady branching flows saturating this bound up to a logarithmic correction. This logarithmic correction appears to arise due to a topological obstruction inherent to two-dimensional steady branching flows. We present a construction of three-dimensional "branching pipe flows" that eliminates the possibility of this logarithmic correction and therefore identifies the optimal scaling as a clean 1/3-power law. Our flows resemble previous numerical studies of the three-dimensional wall-to-wall problem by Motoki, Kawahara & Shimizu (J. Fluid Mech. vol.851, 2018, p.R4}). We also discuss the implications of our result to the heat transfer problem in Rayleigh--B\'enard convection and the problem of anomalous dissipation in a passive scalar.