THE EFFECT OF RAPID DISTORTION OF A FLUID IN TURBULENT MOTION

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the calculation of the changes produced in a homogeneous turbulent motion when the fluid is subjected to a superimposed uniform distortion. The distortion is assumed to occur so rapidly that the contribution to the change in relative position of fluid particles from the turbulence is negligible. On this basis G. I Taylor found the effect of an arbitrary distortion on a purely sinusoidal velocity field and in this paper the effect on homogeneous turbulence is obtained by integrating over all such Fourier components. In the case of turbulence which is initially isotropic, the relative changes in the energies of the three velocity components are found to be independent of the properties of the turbulence and are determined numerically.