Taylor’s (1935) dissipation surrogate reinterpreted

New results from direct numerical simulation of decaying isotropic turbulence show that Taylor’s expression for the viscous dissipation rate ε=CεU3/L is more appropriately interpreted as a surrogate for the inertial energy flux. As a consequence, the well known dependence of the Taylor prefactor Cε on Reynolds number Cε(RL)→Cε,∞ can be understood as corresponding to the onset of an inertial range.