Universality of Small Scale Turbulence

Abstract

The proposed universality of small scale turbulence is investigated for a set of measurements in a cryogenic free jet with a variation of the Reynolds number (Re) from 8500 to 10(6) (max(R(lambda) approximately 1200). The traditional analysis of the statistics of velocity increments by means of structure functions or probability density functions is replaced by a new method which is based on the theory of Markov processes. It gives access to a more complete characterization by means of joint probabilities of finding velocity increments at several scales. Based on this more comprehensive method, our results are very far from a possible universal state, even for R(lambda) above 1000.