On the role of the helicity in the energy transfer in three-dimensional turbulence

etc15 Tracking Number 316

Behavior of the turbulent flows could be changed by changing the nature of the external force or the confining geometry which essentially results in breaking some of the symmetries of the ideal homogeneous and isotropic flows. In a numerical simulation, however, it is possible to selectively break symmetries of the Navier-Stokes equations with other constraints like helicity. In a recent [1] simulation of a decimated version of the incompressible three dimensional Navier-Stokes equations, where helicity was maintained sign-definite using a helical projection, a reversal of energy cascade similar to two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations was observed. The sign- definite helicity breaks the parity symmetry of the flow. It is one of the important symmetries of the flow that contributes to the forward energy cascade in three dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. In our study we measure the degree to which the parity symmetry controls the direction of the cascade. We introduce a mechanism in which the parity is broken stochastically but in a time frozen manner with helical constraints. We keep triadic interactions in Fourier space involving modes with definite sign of helicity and decimate the triads of other modes with opposite sign of helicity with a fixed probability. We studied the cascade of energy in three dimensional turbulence by changing the relative weight between positive and negative helicity modes. We present the results from our recent simulations.