Expansion of the Laser Beam Wavefront in Terms of Zernike Polynomials in the Problem of Turbulence Testing

The results of a study of the wavefront distortions of laser radiation caused by artificial turbulence obtained in laboratory conditions using a fan heater are presented. Decomposition of the wavefront in terms of Zernike polynomials is a standard procedure that traditionally is used to investigate the set of existing aberrations. In addition, the spectral analysis of the wavefront dynamics makes it possible to estimate the fraction of the energy distributed between different Zernike modes. It is shown that the fraction of energy related to the low-order polynomials is higher compared to the high-order polynomials. Also, one of the consequences of Taylor’s hypothesis is confirmed—low-order aberrations are slower compared to the higher-order ones.

On the applicability of Taylor's hypothesis, including small sampling velocities

Taylor's hypothesis, or the frozen turbulence approximation, can be used to estimate also the specific energy dissipation rate $\epsilon$ by comparing experimental results with the Kolmogorov–Obukhov expression. The hypothesis assumes that a frequency detected by an instrument moving with a constant large velocity $V$ can be related to a wavenumber by $\omega = k V$ . It is, however, not obvious how large the translational velocity has to be in order to make the hypothesis valid, or at least applicable with some acceptable uncertainty. Using the space–time-varying structure function for homogeneous and isotropic conditions, this question is addressed in the present study with emphasis on small velocities $V$ . The structure function is obtained using results from numerical solutions of the Navier–Stokes equation. Particular attention is given to the $V$ variation of the estimated specific energy dissipation, $\epsilon _{est}$ , compared with the actual value, $\epsilon$ , used in the numerical calculations. In contrast to previous studies, the results emphasize velocities $V$ less than or comparable to the one-component root-mean-square velocity, $u_{rms}$ . We find that $\epsilon$ can be determined to an acceptable accuracy for $V \geq 0.3\,u_{rms}$ . A simple analytical model is suggested to explain the main features of the observations, both Eulerian and Lagrangian. The model assumes that the observed time variations are solely due to eddies moving past the observer, thus ignoring eddy deformation and intermittency effects. In spite of these simplifications, the analysis accounts for most of the numerical results when also eddy-size-dependent velocities are accounted for.

3D pressure field reconstruction from time-resolved stereoscopic PIV measurements by relaxation of Taylor's hypothesis

This work presents reconstructions of 3D pressure fields starting from 2D3C stereoscopic-PIV (SPIV) measurements. In Fratantonio et al. (2021), we presented a new reconstruction algorithm, the “Instantaneous convection” method, capable of producing 3D velocity fields from time-resolved SPIV measurements. For reconstructions in flows with strong shear layers and high turbulence intensity, this method is able to provide time-resolved 3D velocity volumes that are more accurate than those that can be obtained from the more frequently employed reconstruction method based on the Taylor’s hypothesis and on the use of a mean convective field. Here we investigate the possibility of reconstructing the 3D pressure field from the timeresolved series of reconstructed 3D velocity data. A pseudo-tracking method is employed for computing the velocity material derivative, and the pressure field is then reconstructed by solving the 3D Poisson equation. The velocity and pressure reconstructions are validated on the Direct Numerical Simulation data of the turbulent channel flow taken from the John Hopkins Turbulence Database (JHTDB), and an application to experimental SPIV measurements of an air jet flow in coflow carried out at the Turbulent Mixing Tunnel (TMT) facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory is presented.

Pressure from data-driven-estimated velocity fields using snapshot PIV and fast probes

This work explores the use of data-driven techniques to retrieve time-resolved information from snapshot PIV by exploiting the information from synchronized high-repetition rate sensors measuring flow quantities in few points, and to compute from it the instantaneous pressure field leveraging the Navier-Stokes momentum equation of the flow. This work focus on a technique rooted in the Extended Proper Orthogonal Decomposition, which already proven good performances in estimating time-resolved velocity fields from a finite number of probes synchronized with field measurements. The performances of the technique and its robustness to noise are tested on 2 synthetic dataset, a laminar one and a turbulent one, and compared to the most commonly applied technique to retrieve time-resolved information from snapshot PIV which exploits Taylor’s hypothesis.

IWC Analysis of Turbulent Plume Fires

Plumes fires are characterized by a turbulent nature with a large number of different scales. LES is used to solve the largest structures and to model the smallest ones. Grid size and time steps become decisive to place a limit between solved and modelled turbulence. A spectral analysis, both in frequency and wavenumber domain of the specific turbulent kinetic energy is an instrument to check for the information investigated. Unfortunately, the spectra in the wavenumber domain can be difficult to achieve adequately, because the specific turbulent kinetic energy values should be available in many points. This issue can be overcome by identifying a correlation law between frequencies and wavenumbers. An approach to identify this correlation law can be to adopt the IWC method. Here, for a test case of a turbulent reacting plume of burning propane, specific turbulent kinetic energy is analysed both in frequency and wavenumber and a correlation law between them is identified by using the IWC method. A study has been performed to evaluate the grid dependency of the specific turbulent kinetic energy spectra, by assessing the extension of the Kolmogorov power law region. The correlation results are discussed and compared with the Taylor’s hypothesis.

Exchange rate pass-through: an analysis of a panel quantile regression

The purpose of this study is to examine the degree of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) with the focus on Taylor (2000)’s hypothesis that asserts ERPT tends to be high (low) in high (low) inflation states. To this end, a panel quantile regression is applied to the data from 37 countries over the period of 1996-2018. The panel quantile regression allows us to capture the distributional heterogeneity in the ERPT coefficient and thus to directly address the question of whether the ERPT degree depends on the inflationary environment. The results indicate that ERPT is low (high) at low (high) quantiles of the inflation rate, supporting Taylor’s hypothesis. Keywords: Exchange rate pass-through, Taylor’s Hypothesis, Panel Quantile RegressionJEL Codes: C13, E31, F31

Beyond Taylor’s hypothesis: a novel volumetric reconstruction of velocity and density fields for variable-density and shear flows

This work presents a novel numerical procedure for reconstructing volumetric density and velocity fields from planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) and stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (SPIV) data. This new method is theoretically and practically demonstrated to provide more accurate 3D vortical structures and density fields in high shear flows than reconstruction methods based on the mean convective velocity. While Taylor’s hypothesis of frozen turbulence is commonly applied by using the local mean streamwise velocity, the proposed algorithm uses the measured local instantaneous velocity for data convection. It consists of a step-by-step reconstruction based on a mixed Lagrangian–Eulerian solver that includes the 3D interpolation of scattered flow data and that relaxes the Taylor’s hypothesis by iterative enforcement of the incompressibility constraint on the velocity field. This methodology provides 3D fields with temporal resolution, spatial resolution, and accuracy comparable to that of real 3D snapshots, thus providing a practical alternative to tomographic measurements. The procedure is validated using numerical data of the constant-density channel flow available on the Johns Hopkins University Turbulence Database (JHTDB), showing the accurate reconstruction of the 3D velocity field. The algorithm is applied to an experimental dataset of PLIF and SPIV measurements of a variable-density jet flow, demonstrating its capability to provide 3D velocity and density fields that are more consistent with the Navier–Stokes equations compared to the mean flow convective method. Graphic abstract

Wall-Normal Velocity Correlations in a Zero Pressure Gradient Turbulent Boundary Layer

An experimental campaign dedicated to the characterization of the wall-normal velocity correlations in a zero pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer was performed. A double set of laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) benches were used to access two-point two-time correlations of the wall-normal velocity. The measurements analysis confirms several important hypotheses classically made to model wall pressure spectra from the velocity correlations. In particular, the ratio of the wall-normal Reynolds stress to the turbulent shear stress is confirmed to exhibit a large plateau in the logarithmic region. In addition, Taylor's hypothesis of frozen turbulence is well recovered for the wall-normal velocity fluctuations. The convection velocity for the wall-normal velocity fluctuations is also shown to evolve across the boundary layer, according to the mean velocity profile. Furthermore, the decorrelation time scale of velocity correlations appears to be increasing throughout the boundary layer thickness in accordance with the increase of the convection velocity. The results obtained with this original campaign will help improving models for wall pressure spectra, especially those based on the resolution of the Poisson equation for the pressure for which the wall pressure correlations are related to the wall-normal velocity correlations.