The residual of anisotropy at small scales in high shear turbulence

It has always been believed that turbulence in fluids can achieve a universal state at small scales with fluctuations that, becoming statistically isotropic, are characterized by universal scaling laws. In fact, in different branches of physics it is common to find conditions such that statistical isotropy is never recovered and the anisotropy induced by large scale shear contaminates the entire range of scales up to velocity gradients. We address this issue here, of particular significance, for wall bounded flows. The systematic decomposition in spherical harmonics of the correlation functions of velocity fluctuations enables us to extract the different anisotropic contributions. They vanish at small scale at a relatively fast rate under weak shear. Under strong shear instead they keep a significant amplitude up to viscous scales, thus leaving a persistent signature on the gradients which can be detected even in the statistics of low order, e.g., in the energy dissipation tensor. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.