Identification of Tubular Vortices in Turbulence

Abstract

A new method is proposed to extract the axes of tubular vortices in turbulence. Loci of sectional local minimum of the pressure associated with the advection acceleration are traced numerically. It is applied to a homogeneous isotropic turbulence to demonstrate that swirling motions actually exist around these axes. The present method is shown to be superior to several typical ones commonly used in identifying tubular vortices.