Dynamics of Elasto-Inertial Turbulence in Flows with Polymer Additives

Elasto-inertial turbulence is a new state of turbulence that may occur in certain viscoelastic flows, in particular flows with polymer additives. The dynamics of elasto-inertial turbulence is here investigated numerically from the perspective of the coupling between polymer dynamics and flow structures. The resulting mechanism helps resolve a long standing controversy in the understanding of polymer drag reduction and explains the phenomenon of early turbulence, or onset of turbulence at lower Reynolds numbers than for Newtonian flows, previously observed in polymeric flows.
In particular, we show that the introduction of small perturbations into the polymeric flow excites the unstable nature of the nonlinear advection term, resulting in the formation of sheets or cliffs of polymer stretch. These sheets of high polymer stretch, hosting a significant increase in extensional viscosity, create a strong local anisotropy, with a formation of local low-speed jet-like flow. The response of the flow is through pressure, whose role is to redistribute energy across components of momentum, resulting in the formation of waves, or trains of alternating rotational and straining motions. The mechanism shares some similarity with the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, except that the thickness of these sheets is too close to the Kolmogorov scale for vortices to be created. Once triggered, EIT is self-sustained since the elastic instability creates the very velocity fluctuations it feeds upon.