Extended Self-Similarity in Drag-Reduced Turbulent Flow of Viscoelastic Fluid

Direct numerical simulations (DNS) have been performed for drag-reduced turbulent channel flow with surfactant additives and forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence with polymer additives. Giesekus constitutive equation and finite extensible nonlinear elastic model with Peterlin closure were used to describe the elastic stress tensor for both cases, respectively. For comparison, DNS of water flows for both cases were also performed. Based on the DNS data, the extended self-similarity (ESS) of turbulence scaling law is investigated for water and viscoelastic fluids in turbulent channel flow and forced homogeneous isotropic turbulence. It is obtained that ESS still holds for drag-reduced turbulent flows of viscoelastic fluids. In viscoelastic fluid flows, the regions at which δu(r)∝r and S_p(r)∝S₃(r)^ζ(p) with ζ(p) = p/3, where r is the scale length, δu(r) is the longitudinal velocity difference along r and S_p(r) is the pth-order moment of velocity increments, in the K41 (Kolmogorov theory)-fashioned plots and ESS-fashioned plots, respectively, are all broadened to larger scale for all the investigated cases.