Kolmogorov microscales
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In
fluid dynamics In physics, physical chemistry and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids – liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including (the study of air and other gases in motion ...
, Kolmogorov microscales are the smallest scales in
turbulent flow In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by Chaos theory, chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers with no disrupt ...
. At the Kolmogorov scale,
viscosity Viscosity is a measure of a fluid's rate-dependent drag (physics), resistance to a change in shape or to movement of its neighboring portions relative to one another. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of ''thickness''; for e ...
dominates and the turbulence kinetic energy is dissipated into
thermal energy The term "thermal energy" is often used ambiguously in physics and engineering. It can denote several different physical concepts, including: * Internal energy: The energy contained within a body of matter or radiation, excluding the potential en ...
. They are defined by where * is the average rate of dissipation of turbulence kinetic energy per unit mass, and * is the
kinematic viscosity Viscosity is a measure of a fluid's rate-dependent drag (physics), resistance to a change in shape or to movement of its neighboring portions relative to one another. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of ''thickness''; for e ...
of the fluid. Typical values of the Kolmogorov length scale, for atmospheric motion in which the large eddies have length scales on the order of kilometers, range from 0.1 to 10 millimeters; for smaller flows such as in laboratory systems, may be much smaller. In 1941,
Andrey Kolmogorov Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov ( rus, Андре́й Никола́евич Колмого́ров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ kəlmɐˈɡorəf, a=Ru-Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov.ogg, 25 April 1903 – 20 October 1987) was a Soviet ...
introduced the hypothesis that the smallest scales of
turbulence In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers with no disruption between ...
are universal (similar for every
turbulent flow In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by Chaos theory, chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers with no disrupt ...
) and that they depend only on and . The definitions of the Kolmogorov microscales can be obtained using this idea and dimensional analysis. Since the dimension of kinematic viscosity is length2/time, and the dimension of the energy dissipation rate per unit mass is length2/time3, the only combination that has the dimension of time is \tau_\eta=\sqrt which is the Kolmogorov time scale. Similarly, the Kolmogorov length scale is the only combination of and that has dimension of length. Alternatively, the definition of the Kolmogorov time scale can be obtained from the inverse of the mean square strain rate tensor, \tau_\eta = \tfrac, which also gives \tau_\eta = \sqrt using the definition of the energy dissipation rate per unit mass \varepsilon = 2 \nu \langle E_ E_ \rangle . Then the Kolmogorov length scale can be obtained as the scale at which the
Reynolds number In fluid dynamics, the Reynolds number () is a dimensionless quantity that helps predict fluid flow patterns in different situations by measuring the ratio between Inertia, inertial and viscous forces. At low Reynolds numbers, flows tend to ...
() is equal to 1, : \mathrm = \frac = \frac = 1. Kolmogorov's 1941 theory is a mean field theory since it assumes that the relevant dynamical parameter is the mean energy dissipation rate. In fluid turbulence, the energy dissipation rate fluctuates in space and time, so it is possible to think of the microscales as quantities that also vary in space and time. However, standard practice is to use mean field values since they represent the typical values of the smallest scales in a given flow. In 1961, Kolomogorov published a refined version of the similarity hypotheses that accounts for the log-normal distribution of the dissipation rate.


See also

* Taylor microscale * Integral length scale * Batchelor scale


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kolmogorov Microscales Turbulence