FLOW paper published in PRL (July 2018)
The article 'Flexible fiber reveals the two-point statistical properties of turbulence’ by M. E. Rosti, A. A. Banaei, L. Brandt, and A. Mazzino has been published in recent issue of Physical Review Letters (121:044501, Jul 2018). The work was chosen to appear on the cover of the journal.
The paper can be found
here
.
Abstract:
We studied the dynamics of a flexible fiber freely moving in a three-dimensional fully developed turbulent field and presented a theory to describe the interaction between the fiber elasticity and the turbulent flow. Two distinct regimes of flapping are identified: the main result of our analysis is the identification of a flapping regime where the fiber, despite its elasticity, is slaved to the turbulent fluctuations; thus, the fiber can be used to measure two-point statistical observables of turbulence, such as scaling exponents of velocity structure functions, the sign of the energy cascade and the energy flux of turbulence, as well as the characteristic times of the eddies within the inertial range of scales.