Implosion and shock compression of two-dimensional eddy structures

Integration of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations shows that large amplifications of eddy kinetic energy are possible during the cylindrical implosion of two-dimensional randomized eddy structures. In the limit of vanishingly small initial eddy kinetic energy and viscosity, the amplification of the kinetic energy, and the density fluctuations associated with the eddies, is consistent with assumption that the angular momentum of individual eddies is conserved during the implosion. With increasing initial eddy kinetic energy, nonlinear effects reduce the amplification by a factor approximately exponential in the product of the compression and the ratio of the initial eddy kinetic energy to the implosion kinetic energy.