Very High Resolution Simulations of Compressible, Turbulent Flows

The steadily increasing power of supercomputing systems is enabling very high resolution simulations of compressible, turbulent flows in the high Reynolds number limit, which is of interest in astrophysics as well as in several other fluid dynamical applications. This paper discusses two such simulations, using grids of up to 8 billion cells. In each type of flow, convergence in a statistical sense is observed as the mesh is refined. The behavior of the convergent sequences indicates how a subgrid-scale model of turbulence could improve the treatment of these flows by high-resolution Euler schemes like PPM. The best resolved case, a simulation of a Richtmyer-Meshkov mixing layer in a shock tube experiment, also points the way toward such a subgrid-scale model. Analysis of the results of that simulation indicates a proportionality relationship between the energy transfer rate from large to small motions and the determinant of the deviatoric symmetric strain as well as the divergence of the velocity for the large-scale field.