Experiments on internal intermittency and fine-structure distribution functions in fully turbulent fluid

Spatial ‘intermittency’ in the velocity field fine-structure of fully turbulent flow regions, first observed by Batchelor & Townsend (1949), is studied further here in grid-generated nearly isotropic turbulence and on the axis of a round jet. At large enough Reynolds numbers, appropriately filtered hot-wire anemometer signals appear intermittent as the turbulent patterns are convected past the hot wire by the mean flow. Measurements show that there is a decrease in the relative fluid volume (equal to the ‘intermittency factor’) occupied by fine-structure of given size as the turbulence Reynolds number is increased. They show also that, for a fixed Reynolds number, the relative volume is smaller for smaller fine-structure. The average linear dimension of the fine-structure regions turns out to be much larger than the sizes of fine-structure therein. At R λ , = 110, for example, the ratio ranges from 15 to 30, decreasing with decreasing ‘eddy’ size. It appears to be approaching an asymptote with increasing R λ . The flatness factors and probability distributions of the first derivative, the second derivative, band-passed and high-passed velocity fluctuation signals were also measured. The turbulence Reynolds numbers R λ ranged from 12 to 830. The flatness factors of the first and the second derivatives increase monotonically with R λ . Those of the second derivative vary with R λ 0.25 for R λ 300. No indication of asymptotic constant values was observed for R λ up to the order of one thousand. The probability distributions of velocity fluctuations and large-scale signals are nearly normal, while the small-scale signals are not. The flatness factor of the filtered band-pass velocity signal increases with increasing frequency. At the larger Reynolds numbers, the square of the signal associated with large wave-numbers may be approximated by a log-normal probability distribution for amplitudes when probabilities fall between 0·3 and 0·95, in limited agreement with the theory of Kolmogorov (1962), Oboukhov (1962), Gurvich & Yaglom (1967).