2015 Volume 2 Issue 2 Pages 15-00157
The present article is intended to give a broad overview and present details on the Lie symmetry induced statistical turbulence theory put forward by the authors and various other collaborators over the last twenty years. For this is crucial to understand that our present text-book knowledge proclaims that Lie symmetries such as Galilean transformation lie at the heart of fluid dynamics. These important properties also carry over to the statistical description of turbulence, i.e. to the Reynolds stress transport equations and its generalization, the multi-point correlation equations (MPCE). Interesting enough, the MPCE admit a much larger set of symmetries, in fact infinite dimensional, subsequently named statistical symmetries. Apart from the MPCE also the two other known complete theories of turbulence, the Lundgren-Monin-Novikov (LMN) hierarchy of probability density functions and the Hopf functional theory, share this property of admitting both classical mechanical and statistical Lie symmetries. As the Galilean transformation illuminates fundamental properties of classical mechanics, the new statistical symmetries mirror key properties of turbulence such as intermittency and non-gaussianity. After an introduction to Lie symmetries have been given, these facts will be detailed for all three turbulence approaches i.e. MPCE, LMN and Hopf approach. From a practical point of view, these new symmetries have important consequences for our understanding of turbulent scaling laws. The symmetries form the essential foundation to construct exact solutions. Presently we detail this only for the infinite set of MPCE, which in turn are identified as classical and new turbulent scaling laws. Examples on various classical and new shear flow scaling laws including higher order moments will be presented. Even new scaling have been forecasted from these symmetries and in turn validated by DNS.
