EFFECTS OF TURBULENCE LENGTH-SCALE DISTRIBUTION ON SCALAR MIXING IN HOMOGENEOUS TURBULENT-FLOW

The linear eddy mixing model is used to study effects of the turbulence length-scale distribution on the transient evolution of a passive scalar in a statistically steady homogeneous turbulent flow. Model simulations are carried out using both wide-band length-scale distributions reflecting high-Reynolds-number scaling, and narrow-band (in effect, low-Reynolds-number) distributions. The two cases are found to exhibit qualitative differences in mixing behavior. These differences are interpreted mechanistically. The narrow-band case yields the best agreement with published direct numerical simulation results, suggesting that those results are, in effect, low-Reynolds-number results not readily extrapolated to high-Reynolds-number mixing.