A fractional subgrid-scale model for turbulent flows: Theoretical formulation and a priori study

Coherent structures/motions in turbulence inherently give rise to intermittent signals with sharp peaks, heavy-skirt, and skewed distributions of velocity increments, highlighting the non-Gaussian nature of turbulence. This suggests that the spatial nonlocal interactions cannot be ruled out of the turbulence physics. Furthermore, filtering the Navier–Stokes equations in the large eddy simulation of turbulent flows would further enhance the existing nonlocality, emerging in the corresponding subgrid scale fluid motions. This urges the development of new nonlocal closure models, which respect the corresponding non-Gaussian statistics of the subgrid stochastic motions. To this end and starting from the filtered Boltzmann equation, we model the corresponding equilibrium distribution function with a Lévy-stable distribution, leading to the proposed fractional-order modeling of subgrid-scale stresses. We approximate the filtered equilibrium distribution function with a power-law term and derive the corresponding filtered Navier–Stokes equations. Subsequently in our functional modeling, the divergence of subgrid-scale stresses emerges as a single-parameter fractional Laplacian, (−Δ)α(·), α ∈ (0, 1], of the filtered velocity field. The only model parameter, i.e., the fractional exponent, appears to be strictly dependent on the filter-width and the flow Reynolds number. We furthermore explore the main physical and mathematical properties of the proposed model under a set of mild conditions. Finally, the introduced model undergoes a priori evaluations based on the direct numerical simulation database of forced and decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulent flows at relatively high and moderate Reynolds numbers, respectively. Such analysis provides a comparative study of predictability and performance of the proposed fractional model.