Restarts of bursts in turbulence in a log-minimal channel

Physics > Fluid Dynamics [Submitted on 18 Jun 2026] Title:Restarts of bursts in turbulence in a log-minimal channel View PDFAbstract:Recent evidence on the sustainment of wall-normal-velocity bursts in wall-bounded turbulence challenges the classical streak-dependent picture, suggesting that the problem should be approached relying on no a priori knowledge regarding other flow structures. This paper discusses the restarts of bursts in a log-minimal channel within the framework of a linearised Navier-Stokes system with forcing terms encapsulating the nonlinear effects of all other structures. Two generic issues are addressed. The first concerns the conditions for burst-restart-like solutions for the forced linearised system itself. We formulate optimisation problems to understand the 'minimal requirements' for burst restarting. The solutions illustrate three conceptual periods in a typical restarting process, distinguished by the behaviour of spanwise vorticity structures: breakup, counter-rotating catch-up, and co-rotating catch-up. External forces promote this process by breaking up forward-inclined vortices and merging co-rotating, catching-up vortices. A quantity termed linearly available energy (LAE) is accordingly proposed to parameterise the restarting process. The second issue concerns the contributory features to the observed burst restarts in real turbulence. We show that an essential role of nonlinearity in restarting a burst is to increase a decaying state's LAE to a level sufficient for the onset of the subsequent burst. Flow patterns extracted during the restarting stage exhibit breakup and merging effects, both facilitated by nonlinearity. This suggests that the two effects observed in both the linearised models and real turbulence are manifestations of real flow structures that cause burst restarts. Current browse context: physics.flu-dyn Change to browse by: References & Citations Loading... Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.