IUTAM Symposium on Reynolds Number Scaling in Turbulent Flow

Book excerpt: This volume presents selected papers from the IUTAM Symposium on Reynolds Number Scaling in Turbulent Flow, convened in Princeton, NJ, USA, September I1-13, 2002. The behavior ofturbulence at high Reynolds number is interesting from a fundamental point of view, in that most theories of turbulence make very specific predictions in the limit of infinite Reynolds number. From a more practical point of view, there exist many applications that involve turbulent flow where the Reynolds numbers are extremely large. For example, large vehicles such as submarines and commercial transports operate at Reynolds 9 numbers based on length ofthe order oft0 , and industrial pipe flows cover a 7 very wide range of Reynolds numbers up to 10 • Many very important applications of high Reynolds number flow pertain to atmospheric and other geophysical flows where extremely high Reynolds numbers are the rule rather than the exception, and the understanding of climate changes and the prediction of destructive weather effects hinges to some extent on our appreciation ofhigh-Reynolds number turbulence behavior. The important effects of Reynolds number on turbulence has received a great deal of recent attention. The objective of the Symposium was to bring together many of the world's experts in this area to appraise the new experimental results, discuss new scaling laws and turbulence models, and to enhance our mutual understanding of turbulence.