Coast to Coast Seminar Series: "Calculating, modelling and understanding turbulence using adaptive wavelets"

Abstract

Turbulence remains an outstanding challenge, both theoretically and computationally. In this talk I will explain why a theory of turbulence has proved elusive, and why it is difficult to accurately simulate realistic turbulent flows. Scientific computation based on the adaptive wavelet transform may dramatically reduce the complexity of accurate turbulence simulations. I will give examples of adaptive wavelet numerical simulations of turbulence which take advantage of turbulence intermittency. Finally, I will argue that effective and accurate simulations of turbulence will help advance our understanding of the mathematical structure of the Navier-Stokes equations in the limit of large Reynolds numbers.