A refinement of previous hypotheses concerning the local structure of turbulence in a viscous incompressible fluid at high Reynolds number

Abstract

The hypotheses concerning the local structure of turbulence at high Reynolds number, developed in the years 1939-41 by myself and Oboukhov (Kolmogorov 1941 a,b,c ; Oboukhov 1941 a,b ) were based physically on Richardson's idea of the existence in the turbulent flow of vortices on all possible scales l < r < L between the ‘external scales’ L and the ‘internal scale’ l and of a certain uniform mechanism of energy transfer from the coarser-scaled vortices to the finer.