Evolution of the scalar dissipation rate downstream of a concentrated line source in turbulent channel flow

The dissipation rate, εθ, of a passive scalar (temperature in air) emitted from a concentrated source into a fully developed high-aspect-ratio turbulent channel flow is studied. The goal of the present work is to investigate the return to isotropy of the scalar field when the scalar is injected in a highly anisotropic manner into an inhomogeneous turbulent flow at small scales. Both experiments and direct numerical simulations (DNS) were used to study the downstream evolution of εθ for scalar fields generated by line sources located at the channel centreline (ys/h = 1.0) and near the wall (ys/h = 0.17). The temperature fluctuations and temperature derivatives were measured by means of a pair of parallel cold-wire thermometers in a flow at Reτ = 520. The DNS were performed at Reτ = 190 using a spectral method to solve the continuity and Navier-Stokes equations, and a flux integral method (Germaine, Mydlarski & Cortelezzi, J. Comput. Phys., vol. 174, 2001, pp. 614-648) for the advection-diffusion equation. The statistics of the scalar field computed from both experimental and numerical data were found to be in good agreement, with certain discrepancies that were attributable to the difference in the Reynolds numbers of the two flows. A return to isotropy of the small scales was never perfectly observed in any region of the channel for the downstream distances studied herein. However, a continuous decay of the small-scale anisotropy was observed for the scalar field generated by the centreline line source in both the experiments and DNS. The scalar mixing was found to be more rapid in the near-wall region, where the experimental results exhibited low levels of small-scale anisotropy. However, the DNS, which were performed at lower Reτ, showed that persistent anisotropy can also exist near the wall, independently of the downstream location. The role of the mean velocity gradient in the production of εθ (and therefore anisotropy) in the near-wall region was highlighted

Toll-Like Receptors: Role in Dermatological Disease

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are a class of conserved receptors that recognize pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) present in microbes. In humans, at least ten TLRs have been identified, and their recognition targets range from bacterial endotoxins to lipopeptides, DNA, dsRNA, ssRNA, fungal products, and several host factors. Of dermatological interest, these receptors are expressed on several skin cells including keratinocytes, melanocytes, and Langerhans cells. TLRs are essential in identifying microbial products and are known to link the innate and adaptive immune systems. Over the years, there have been significant advances in our understanding of TLRs in skin inflammation, cutaneous malignancies, and defence mechanisms. In this paper, we will describe the association between TLRs and various skin pathologies and discuss proposed TLR therapeutics

Universality and saturation of intermittency in passive scalar turbulence

The statistical properties of a scalar field advected by the non-intermittent Navier-Stokes flow arising from a two-dimensional inverse energy cascade are investigated. The universality properties of the scalar field are directly probed by comparing the results obtained with two different types of injection mechanisms. Scaling properties are shown to be universal, even though anisotropies injected at large scales persist down to the smallest scales and local isotropy is not fully restored. Scalar statistics is strongly intermittent and scaling exponents saturate to a constant for sufficiently high orders. This is observed also for the advection by a velocity field rapidly changing in time, pointing to the genericity of the phenomenon. The persistence of anisotropies and the saturation are both statistical signatures of the ramp-and-cliff structures observed in the scalar field.Comment: 4 pages, 8 figure

Turbulence and passive scalar transport in a free-slip surface

We consider the two-dimensional (2D) flow in a flat free-slip surface that bounds a three-dimensional (3D) volume in which the flow is turbulent. The equations of motion for the two-dimensional flow in the surface are neither compressible nor incompressible but strongly influenced by the 3D flow underneath the surface. The velocity correlation functions in the 2D surface and in the 3D volume scale with the same exponents. In the viscous subrange the amplitudes are the same, but in the inertial subrange the 2D one is reduced to 2/3 of the 3D amplitude. The surface flow is more strongly intermittent than the 3D volume flow. Geometric scaling theory is used to derive a relation between the scaling of the velocity field and the density fluctuations of a passive scalar advected on the surface.Comment: 11 pages, 10 Postscript figure

Effect of large-scale intermittency and mean shear on scaling-range exponents in a turbulent jet

The present study investigates the combined impact of the intermittency associated with the turbulent-nonturbulent interface and the mean shear rate in an axisymmetric jet on the structure of turbulence in the scaling range, where the spectrum exhibits a power-law behavior. Second-order structure functions, autocorrelations of the dissipation rate, and spectra of both the longitudinal velocity fluctuation and the passive temperature fluctuation are measured at a distance of 40 diameter downstream from the nozzle exit. All the scaling range exponents are influenced by the large-scale intermittency and the mean shear. The scalar fluctuation is much more sensitive to the variation in large-scale intermittency than the velocity fluctuation.J. Mi and R. A. Antoni

Anomalous scaling of a passive scalar in the presence of strong anisotropy

Field theoretic renormalization group and the operator product expansion are applied to a model of a passive scalar field, advected by the Gaussian strongly anisotropic velocity field. Inertial-range anomalous scaling behavior is established, and explicit asymptotic expressions for the n-th order structure functions of scalar field are obtained; they are represented by superpositions of power laws with nonuniversal (dependent on the anisotropy parameters) anomalous exponents. In the limit of vanishing anisotropy, the exponents are associated with tensor composite operators built of the scalar gradients, and exhibit a kind of hierarchy related to the degree of anisotropy: the less is the rank, the less is the dimension and, consequently, the more important is the contribution to the inertial-range behavior. The leading terms of the even (odd) structure functions are given by the scalar (vector) operators. For the finite anisotropy, the exponents cannot be associated with individual operators (which are essentially ``mixed'' in renormalization), but the aforementioned hierarchy survives for all the cases studied. The second-order structure function is studied in more detail using the renormalization group and zero-mode techniques.Comment: REVTEX file with EPS figure

Particles and fields in fluid turbulence

The understanding of fluid turbulence has considerably progressed in recent years. The application of the methods of statistical mechanics to the description of the motion of fluid particles, i.e. to the Lagrangian dynamics, has led to a new quantitative theory of intermittency in turbulent transport. The first analytical description of anomalous scaling laws in turbulence has been obtained. The underlying physical mechanism reveals the role of statistical integrals of motion in non-equilibrium systems. For turbulent transport, the statistical conservation laws are hidden in the evolution of groups of fluid particles and arise from the competition between the expansion of a group and the change of its geometry. By breaking the scale-invariance symmetry, the statistically conserved quantities lead to the observed anomalous scaling of transported fields. Lagrangian methods also shed new light on some practical issues, such as mixing and turbulent magnetic dynamo.Comment: 165 pages, review article for Rev. Mod. Phy