Gas-kinetic simulation of sustained turbulence in minimal Couette flow

M. A. Gallis, J. R. Torczynski, N. P. Bitter, T. P. Koehler, S. J. Plimpton, and G. Papadakis, Phys Rev Fluids, 3, 071402(R) (2018).

We provide a demonstration that gas-kinetic methods incorporating molecular chaos can simulate the sustained turbulence that occurs in wall-bounded turbulent shear flows. The direct simulation Monte Carlo method, a gas-kinetic molecular method that enforces molecular chaos for gas-molecule collisions, is used to simulate the minimal Couette flow at Re = 500. The resulting law of the wall, the average wall shear stress, the average kinetic energy, and the continually regenerating coherent structures all agree closely with corresponding results from direct numerical simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations. These results indicate that molecular chaos for collisions in gas-kinetic methods does not prevent development of molecular-scale long-range correlations required to form hydrodynamic-scale turbulent coherent structures.

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