Factorized cumulant expansion approximation method for turbulence with reacting and mixing chemical elements of type A + B → Product

The Lewis–Kraichnan space–time version of Hopf functional formalism is considered for the investigation of turbulence with reacting and mixing chemical elements of type A + B → Product. The equations of motion are written in Fourier space. We first define the characteristic functional (or the moments generating functional) for the joint probability distribution of the velocity vector of the flow field and the reactants' concentration scalar fields and translate the equations of motion in terms of the differential equations for the characteristic functional. These differential equations for the characteristic functional are further written in terms of the second characteristic functional (or the cumulant generating functional). This helps us in obtaining the equations for various order cumulants. We note from these equations for cumulants the characteristic difficulty of the theory of turbulence that the (n + 1)th order cumulant C(n+1) occurs in the equation for the dynamics of nth order cumulant Cn. We use the factorized cumulant expansion approximation method for the present investigation. Under this approximation an arbitrary nth order cumulant Cn is expressed in terms of the lower-order cumulants C(2), C(3) and C(n−1) and thus we obtain a closed but untruncated system of equations for the cumulants. On using the factorized fourth-cumulant approximation method a closed set of equations for the reactants' energy spectrum functions and the reactants' energy transfer functions are derived. These equations are solved numerically and the similarity laws of the solutions are derived analytically. The statistical quantities such as the reactants' energy, the reactants' enstrophy, the reactants' scale of segregations and so on are calculated numerically and the statistical laws of these quantities are discussed. Also, the scope of this tool for investigation of turbulent phenomena not covered in the present study is discussed. (paper)