Coherent vortex extraction in 3D turbulent flows using orthogonal wavelets- art. no. 054501

This Letter presents a wavelet technique for extracting coherent vortices f rom three-dimensional turbulent flows, which is applied to a homogeneous is otropic turbulent flow at resolution N = 256(3). The coherent flow is recon structed from only 3%N wavelet coefficients that retain the vortex tubes, a nd 98.9% of the energy with the same k(-5/3) spectrum as the total flow. In contrast, the remaining 97%N wavelet coefficients correspond to the incohe rent flow which is structureless, decorrelated, and whose effect can theref ore be modeled statistically.