This week’s image is a snapshot of flow visualisation in the study of direct numerical simulation (DNS) of forced isotropic turbulence.

The first figure depicts a typical chaotic turbulent field, while the second figure, taken some time later, shows the velocity and vorticity vectors more aligned after self-organisation.

Flow visualisation with velocities represented by red arrows and vorticity by blue arrows

The image was taken from a recent paper by David McComb et al from the University of Edinburgh. This was one of the journal’s research highlights and the authors have kindly provided a short insight into the work available here.

The work is part of an on-going research programme by the authors into the fundamental physics of fluid turbulence.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Image courtesy of W D McComb W D McComb et al 2015 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 48 25FT01

Categories: Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical

Tags: Applied physics, Image of the week, Insights, Mathematical physics