On the statistical evolution of viscous vortex-gas free shear layers

The temporal vortex-gas free shear layer is a Hamiltonian system of N-point vortices in a singly-periodic domain relevant to the (large-scale) development of plane (3D Navier–Stokes) turbulent shear layers. It has been shown (Suryanarayanan et al., 2014) that there are three distinct temporal regimes in its evolution, including an intermediate self-similar regime (RII) with a universal constant spreading rate, and a final state of relative equilibrium. Here, we study the evolution of vortex-gas free shear layers affected by viscosity as simulated by the addition of a random walk component to the motion of the vortices (Chorin, 1973). We show that while the momentum thickness of the layer, θ, scales as t1∕2 in the first and final regimes for the viscous system, it grows as t1 in the intermediate Regime II (observed here for momentum thickness Reynolds numbers Reθ from 50 to over 5000 across different simulations), with the same universal growth rate dθ∕dtΔU=0.0166±0.0002 as in the inviscid case. This suggests that the non-equilibrium universality of Regime II is robust to small perturbations of the Hamiltonian, and that this result could have general consequences for systems with long-range interactions. We further find that, even under conditions where the viscous shear stress is not negligible, the Reynolds shear stress adjusts itself in such a way that their sum is a constant in Regime II and equal to the value of the latter in the inviscid case. The implications of this observation on the dynamics of turbulent shear flows are elaborated.