Sparse space-time resolvent analysis for statistically-stationary and time-varying flows

Abstract: Resolvent analysis provides a framework to predict coherent spatio-temporal structures of largest linear energy amplification, through a singular value decomposition (SVD) of the resolvent operator, obtained by linearizing the Navier-Stokes equations about a known turbulent mean velocity profile. Resolvent analysis utilizes a Fourier decomposition in time, which limits its application to statistically-stationary or time-periodic flows. This work develops a variant of resolvent analysis applicable to time-evolving flows, and proposes a variant that identifies spatio-temporally sparse structures, applicable to either stationary or time-varying systems. Spatio-temporal resolvent analysis is formulated through the incorporation of the temporal dimension via a discrete time-differentiation operator. Sparsity (localisation) is achieved through the addition of an l1-norm penalisation term to the optimisation associated with the SVD. This modified problem can be formulated as a nonlinear eigenproblem, and solved via an inverse power method. We first showcase the implementation of the sparse analysis on statistically-stationary turbulent channel flow, and demonstrate that the sparse variant can identify aspects of the physics not directly evident from standard resolvent analysis. This is followed by applying the sparse space-time formulation on systems that are time-varying: a time-periodic turbulent Stokes boundary layer, and then a turbulent channel flow with a sudden imposition of a lateral pressure gradient, with the original streamwise pressure gradient unchanged. We present results demonstrating how the sparsity-promoting variant can either change the quantitative structure of the leading space-time modes to increase their sparsity, or identify entirely different linear amplification mechanisms compared to non-sparse resolvent analysis.