A Synergetic Approach to the Description of Advanced Turbulence

An attempt is made to construct a phenomenological model of turbulence as a self-organization process in an open system. The representation of a turbulized continuum in the form of a thermodynamic complex consisting of two subsystems—the subsystem of averaged motion and the subsystem of turbulent chaos, which is considered, in turn, as a conglomerate of vortex structures of different space–time scales—made it possible to obtain, by methods of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, the defining relationships for the turbulent fluxes and forces that describe most comprehensively the transport and structurization processes in such a continuum. Using two interpretations of the Kolmogorov parameter (as a quantity that describes the rate of dissipation of energy into heat and as the rate of transfer of turbulent energy in the eddy cascade), the defining relationships were found for this quantity, thereby making the thermodynamic approach self-sufficient. An introduction into the model of internal parameters of the medium, which characterize the excitation of macroscopic degrees of freedom, made it possible to describe thermodynamically the Kolmogorov cascade process and to obtain a variety of kinetic equations (of the Fokker–Planck type in the configuration space) for the functions of distribution of small-scale turbulence characteristics, including the unsteady kinetic equation for the distribution of probability of dissipation of turbulent energy. As an example, a detailed derivation of such relationships is given for the case of stationary turbulence, when a tendency toward local isotropy is observed. In view of the wide occurrence of this phenomenon in nature, one might expect that the developed approach to the problem of modeling strong turbulence will find its use in astrophysical and geophysical applications.