Turbulence in Fluids

Turbulence is a dangerous topic which is often at the origin of serious ?ghts in the scienti?c meetings devoted to it since it represents extremely di?erent points of view, all of which have in common their complexity, as well as an inability to solve the problem. It is even di?cult to agree on what exactly is the problem to be solved. Extremely schematically, two opposing points of view had been adv- ated during these last thirty years: the ?rst one was "statistical", and tried to model the evolution of averaged quantities of the ?ow. This community, which had followed the glorious trail of Taylor and Kolmogorov, believed in the phenomenology of cascades, and strongly disputed the possibility of any coherence or order associated to turbulence. On the other bank of the river standed the "coherence among chaos" community, which considered turbulence from a purely deterministic point of view, by studying either the behaviour of dynamical systems, or the stability of ?ows in various situations. To this community were also associated the experimentalists and computer simulators who sought to identify coherent vortices in ?ows. Situation is more complex now, and the existence of these two camps is less clear. In fact a third point of view pushed by people from the physics community has emerged, with the concepts of renormalization group theory, multifractality, mixing, and Lagrangian approaches.

List of contents

to Turbulence in Fluid Mechanics.- Basic Fluid Dynamics.- Transition to Turbulence.- Shear Flow Turbulence.- Fourier Analysis of Homogeneous Turbulence.- Isotropic Turbulence: Phenomenology and Simulations.- Analytical Theories and Stochastic Models.- Two-Dimensional Turbulence.- Beyond Two-Dimensional Turbulence in GFD.- Statistical Thermodynamics of Turbulence.- Statistical Predictability Theory.- Large-Eddy Simulations.- Towards "Real World Turbulence".

Summary

Turbulence is a dangerous topic which is often at the origin of serious ?ghts in the scienti?c meetings devoted to it since it represents extremely di?erent points of view, all of which have in common their complexity, as well as an inability to solve the problem. It is even di?cult to agree on what exactly is the problem to be solved. Extremely schematically, two opposing points of view had been adv- ated during these last thirty years: the ?rst one was “statistical”, and tried to model the evolution of averaged quantities of the ?ow. This community, which had followed the glorious trail of Taylor and Kolmogorov, believed in the phenomenology of cascades, and strongly disputed the possibility of any coherence or order associated to turbulence. On the other bank of the river standed the “coherence among chaos” community, which considered turbulence from a purely deterministic point of view, by studying either the behaviour of dynamical systems, or the stability of ?ows in various situations. To this community were also associated the experimentalists and computer simulators who sought to identify coherent vortices in ?ows. Situation is more complex now, and the existence of these two camps is less clear. In fact a third point of view pushed by people from the physics community has emerged, with the concepts of renormalization group theory, multifractality, mixing, and Lagrangian approaches.

Additional text

From the reviews of the fourth edition:

"Turbulence in Fluids contains a wealth of information, and its author is a top-tier scientist. … The book is logically ordered and contains a comprehensive list of 738 references. … Lesieur’s monograph is recommended for those who already know quite a bit about turbulence, for the theoretically inclined, and in particular for those interested in homogeneous turbulence and geophysical flows and their numerical simulation." (Mohamed Gad-El-Hak, Siam Review, Vol. 51 (1), 2009)

Report

From the reviews of the fourth edition:

"Turbulence in Fluids contains a wealth of information, and its author is a top-tier scientist. ... The book is logically ordered and contains a comprehensive list of 738 references. ... Lesieur's monograph is recommended for those who already know quite a bit about turbulence, for the theoretically inclined, and in particular for those interested in homogeneous turbulence and geophysical flows and their numerical simulation." (Mohamed Gad-El-Hak, Siam Review, Vol. 51 (1), 2009)

Product details

• Authors: Marcel Lesieur
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 28.12.2007
• EAN: 9781402064340
• ISBN: 978-1-4020-6434-0
• No. of pages: 563
• Weight: 1140 g
• Illustrations: XXXVIII, 563 p.
• Series: Fluid Mechanics and Its Applications; Fluid Mechanics and Its Applications
• Subject: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Technology > Mechanical engineering, production engineering