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Section: New Results

Analysis and modeling of turbulent flows and geophysical flows

Geophysical flows modeling under location uncertainty

Participants : Werner Bauer, Pranav Chandramouli, Long Li, Etienne Mémin.

In this research axis we have devised a principle to derive representation of flow dynamics under location uncertainty. Such an uncertainty is formalized through the introduction of a random term that enables taking into account large-scale approximations or truncation effects performed within the dynamics analytical constitution steps. Rigorously derived from a stochastic version of the Reynolds transport theorem [9], this framework, referred to as modeling under location uncertainty (LU), encompasses several meaningful mechanisms for turbulence modeling. It indeed introduces without any supplementary assumption the following pertinent mechanisms for turbulence modeling: (i) a dissipative operator related to the mixing effect of the large-scale components by the small-scale velocity; (ii) a multiplicative noise representing small-scale energy backscattering; and (iii) a modified advection term related to the so-called turbophoresis phenomena, attached to the migration of inertial particles in regions of lower turbulent diffusivity.

In a series of papers we have shown how LU modeling can be applied to provide stochastic representations of a variety of classical geophysical flows dynamics [12], [13], [14]. Numerical simulations and uncertainty quantification have been performed on Quasi Geostophic approximation (QG) of oceanic models. It has been shown that LU leads to remarkable estimation of the unresolved errors opposite to classical eddy viscosity based models. The noise brings also an additional degree of freedom in the modeling step and pertinent diagnostic relations and variations of the model can be obtained with different scaling assumptions of the turbulent kinetic energy (i.e. of the noise amplitude). For a wind forced QG model in a square box, which is an idealized model of north-Atlantic circulation, we have shown that for different versions of the noise the QG LU model leads to improve long-terms statistics when compared to classical large-eddies simulation strategies. For a QG model we have demonstrated that the LU model allows conserving the global energy. We have also shown numerically that Rosby waves were conserved and that inhomogeneity of the random component triggers secondary circulations. This feature enabled us to draw a formal bridge between a classical system describing the interactions between the mean current and the surface waves and the LU model in which the turbophoresis advection term plays the role of the classical Stokes drift.

Supported by funding from Inria-Mitacs Globalink, we hosted Ruediger Brecht, PhD student at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, for a period of 3 months (May to August) in the Fluminance group. During his stay, Ruediger Brecht worked on the incorporation of a stochastic representation of the small-scale velocity component of a fluid flow in a variational integrator for the rotating shallow-water equations on the sphere, already developed within the first part of its PhD work. This work was based on an ongoing study in the group on a stochastic Quasi-geostrophic model and followed a series of works performed in the Fluminance group to define stochastic geophysical flow dynamics.

Large eddies simulation models under location uncertainty

Participants : Mohamed Yacine Ben Ali, Pranav Chandramouli, Dominique Heitz, Etienne Mémin, Gilles Tissot.

The models under location uncertainty recently introduced by Mémin (2014) [9] provide a new outlook on LES modeling for turbulence studies. These models are derived from a stochastic transport principle. The associated stochastic conservation equations are similar to the filtered Navier- Stokes equation wherein we observe a sub-grid scale dissipation term. However, in the stochastic version, an extra term appears, termed as "velocity bias", which can be treated as a biasing/modification of the large-scale advection by the small scales. This velocity bias, introduced artificially in the literature, appears here automatically through a decorrelation assumption of the small scales at the resolved scale. All sub-grid contributions for the stochastic models are defined by the small-scale velocity auto-correlation tensor. This large scale modeling has been assed and compared to several classical large-scale models on a flow over a circular cylinder at Re 3900 and wall-bounded flows. For all these flows the modeling under uncertainty has provided better results than classical large eddies simulation models. Within the PhD of Yacine Ben Ali we will explore with the CSTB Nantes centre the application of such models for the definition of Reynolds average simulation (RANS) models for wind engineering applications.

Variational principles for structure-preserving discretizations in stochastic fluid dynamics

Participants : Werner Bauer, Long Li, Etienne Mémin.

The overarching goal of this interdisciplinary project is to use variational principles to derive deterministic and stochastic models and corresponding accurate and efficient structure preserving discretizations and to use these schemes to obtain a deeper understanding of the conservation laws of the stochastic fluid dynamics investigated. The newly developed systematic discretization framework is based on discrete variational principles whose highly structured procedures shall be exploited to develop a general software framework that applies automatic code generation. This project will first provide new stochastic fluid models and suitable approximations, with potential future applications in climate science using the developed methods to perform accurate long term simulations while quantifying the solutions uncertainties. The generality of our approach addresses also other research areas such as electrodynamics (EDyn), magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), and plasma physics.

Stochastic compressible fluid dynamics

Participants : Etienne Mémin, Gilles Tissot.

Some work has been performed to extend the stochastic formulation under location uncertainty to compressible flows. The interest is to extend the formulation on the one hand to compressible fluids (for instability mechanisms involved in areoacoustics for instance, or for thermal effects in mixing layers) and on the other hand to geophysical flows where the Boussinesq equation is not valid anymore (density variations due to temperature or salinity gradients). A theoretical study has been performed that opens the door to numerical validations. In particular a baroclinic torque term has been identified that could have major effects in some situations.

Stochastic hydrodynamic stability under location uncertainty

Participants : Etienne Mémin, Gilles Tissot.

In order to predict instability waves propagating within turbulent flows, eigenmodes of the linearised operator is not well suited since it neglects the effect of turbulent fluctuations on the wave dynamics. To cope this difficulty, resolvent analysis has become popular since it represents the response of the linearised operator to any forcing representing the generalised stress tensors. The absence of information on the non-linearity is a strong limitation of the method. In order to refine these models, we propose to consider a stochastic model under location uncertainty expressed in the Fourier domain, to linearise it around the corrected mean-flow and to study resulting eigenmodes. The stochastic part represents the effect of the turbulent field onto the instability wave. It allows to specify a structure of the noise and then to improve existing models. Improvements compared to the resolvent analysis have been found for turbulent channel flow data at τ=180. This work is in collaboration with André Cavalieri (Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica, SP, Brésil).

Singular and regular solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) and relative turbulent models

Participants : Roger Lewandowski, Etienne Mémin, Benoit Pinier.

The common thread of this work is the problem set by J. Leray in 1934 : does a regular solution of the Navier- Stokes equations (NSE) with a smooth initial data develop a singularity in finite time, what is the precise structure of a global weak solution to the Navier-Stokes equations, and are we able to prove any uniqueness result of such a solution. This is a very hard problem for which there is for the moment no answer. Nevertheless, this question leads us to reconsider the theory of Leray for the study of the Navier-Stokes equations in the whole space with an additional eddy viscosity term that models the Reynolds stress in the context of large- scale flow modelling. It appears that Leray's theory cannot be generalized turnkey for this problem, so that things must be reconsidered from the beginning. This problem is approached by a regularization process using mollifiers, and particular attention must be paid to the eddy viscosity term. For this regularized problem and when the eddy viscosity has enough regularity, we have been able to prove the existence of a global unique solution that is of class C? in time and space and that satisfies the energy balance. Moreover, when the eddy viscosity is of compact support in space, uniformly in time, we recently shown that this solution converges to a turbulent solution to the corresponding Navier-Stokes equations,carried when the regularizing parameter goes to 0. These results are described in a paper published in JMAA [24]

In the framework of the collaboration with the University of Pisa (Italy), namely with Luigi Berselli collaboration, we considered the three dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with non stationary source terms chosen in a suitable space. We proved the existence of Leray-Hopf weak solutions and that it is possible to characterize (up to sub-sequences) their long-time averages, which satisfy the Reynolds averaged equations, involving a Reynolds stress. Moreover, we showed that the turbulent dissipation is bounded by the sum of the Reynolds stress work and of the external turbulent fluxes, without any additional assumption, than that of dealing with Leray-Hopf weak solutions. This is a very nice generalisation to non stationnary source terms of a famous results by Foais. IN the same work, we also considered ensemble averages of solutions, associated with a set of different forces and we proved that the fluctuations continue to have a dissipative effect on the mean flow. These results have been published in Nonlinearity [19]. These results have been extended in the framework of POD for reduced models in [18].

In [55] we have shown the existence of a solution to a 1D Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes vertical model suitable in the atmospheric boundary layer, under suyitable assumption on the data. The paper is received for publication in thje journal Pure and Applied Functional Analysis (PAFA).

We also have introduced a turbulence model including a backscatter term, which has the same structure as the Voigt model. The additional term is derived in certain specific regimes of the flow, such as the convergence to stable statistical states. We get estimates for the velocity v in LtHx1Wt1,2Hx1/2, that allow us to prove the existence and uniqueness of a regular-weak solutions (v,p) to the resulting system, for a given fixed eddy viscosity. We then prove a structural compactness result that highlights the robustness of the model. This allows us to pass to the limit in the quadratic source term in the equation for the turbulent kinetic energy k, which yields the existence of a weak solution to the corresponding Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes system satisfied by (v,p,k). These results are writen in [47], a paper which is under revision in Non Linear Analysis.

Another study in collaboration with B. Pinier, P. Chandramouli and E. Memin has been undertaken. This work takes place within the context of the PhD work of B. Pinier. We have tested the performances of an incompressible turbulence Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes one-closure equation model in a boundary layer, which requires the determination of the mixing length l. A series of direct numerical simulation have been performed, with flat and non trivial topographies, to obtain by interpolation a generic formula l = l(Re6, z), Re6 being the frictional Reynolds number, and z the distance to the wall. Numerical simulations have been carried out at high Reynolds numbers with this turbulence model, in order to discuss its ability to properly reproduce the standard profiles observed in neutral boundary layers, and to assess its advantages, its disadvantages and its limits. We also proceeded to a mathematical analysis of the model.

Stochastic flow model to predict the mean velocity in wall bounded flows

Participants : Roger Lewandowski, Etienne Mémin, Benoit Pinier.

To date no satisfying model exists to explain the mean velocity profile within the whole turbulent layer of canonical wall bounded flows. We propose a modification of the velocity profile expression that ensues from the stochastic representation of fluid flows dynamics proposed recently in the group and referred to as "modeling under location uncertainty". This framework introduces in a rigorous way a subgrid term generalizing the eddy-viscosity assumption and an eddy-induced advection term resulting from turbulence inhomogeneity. This latter term gives rise to a theoretically well-grounded model for the transitional zone between the viscous sublayer and the turbulent sublayer. An expression of the small-scale velocity component is also provided in the viscous zone. Numerical assessment of the results have been performed for turbulent boundary layer flows, pipe flows and channel flows at various Reynolds numbers [25][17].

Numerical and experimental image and flow database

Participants : Pranav Chandramouli, Dominique Heitz.

The goal was to design a database for the evaluation of the different techniques developed in the Fluminance group. The first challenge was to enlarge a database mainly based on two-dimensional flows, with three-dimensional turbulent flows. Synthetic image sequences based on homogeneous isotropic turbulence and on circular cylinder wake have been provided. These images have been completed with time resolved Particle Image Velocimetry measurements in wake and mixing layers flows. This database provides different realistic conditions to analyse the performance of the methods: time steps between images, level of noise, Reynolds number, large-scale images. The second challenge was to carry out orthogonal dual plane time resolved stereoscopic PIV measurements in turbulent flows. The diagnostic employed two orthogonal and synchronized stereoscopic PIV measurements to provide the three velocity components in planes perpendicular and parallel to the streamwise flow direction. These temporally resolved planar slices observations have been be used within a 4DVar assimilation technique, to reconstruct three-dimensional turbulent flows from data. The third challenge was to carry out a time resolved tomoPIV experiments in a turbulent wake flow. This work has been submitted to the Journal of Computational Physics.

Fast 3D flow reconstruction from 2D cross-plane observations

Participants : Pranav Chandramouli, Dominique Heitz, Etienne Mémin.

We proposed a computationally efficient flow reconstruction technique, exploiting homogeneity in a given direction, to recreate three dimensional instantaneous turbulent velocity fields from snapshots of two dimension planar fields. This methodology, termed as "snapshot optimisation" or SO, enables to provide 3D data-sets for studies which are currently restricted by the limitations of experimental measurement techniques. The SO method aims at optimising the error between an inlet plane with a homogeneous direction and snap-shots, obtained over a sufficient period of time, on the observation plane. The observations are carried out on a plane perpendicular to the inlet plane with a shared edge normal to the homogeneity direction. The method is applicable to all flows which display a direction of homogeneity such as cylinder wake flows, channel flow, mixing layer, and jet (axi-symmetric). The ability of the method is assessed with two synthetic data-sets, and three experimental PIV data-sets. A good reconstruction of the large-scale structures are observed for all cases. This study has been published in the journal "Experiments in Fluids" [21].