Vortices within vortices
Hierarchical nature of vortex tubes in turbulence
In this work we investigate the classical idea that smaller structures in turbulent flows, while engaged in their own internal dynamics, are advected by the larger structures. They are not advected undistorted, however. We see instead that the small scale structures are sheared and twisted by the larger scales. This illuminates the basic mechanisms of the turbulent cascade, here in the Re-lambda = 430 isotropic turbulence dataset from DNS using 1024x1024x1024 grid-points. For more details, see : Kai Bürger et al. (2012), arXiv:1210.3325.