Local equilibrium hypothesis and Taylor’s dissipation law

To qualitatively investigate the validity of Kolmogorov local equilibrium hypothesis and the Taylor dissipation law, we conduct direct numerical simulations of the three-dimensional turbulent Kolmogorov flow. Since strong scale-by-scale (i.e. Richardson-type) energy cascade events occur quasi-periodically, the kinetic energy of the turbulence and its dissipation rate evolve quasi-periodically too. In this unsteady turbulence driven by a steady force, instantaneous values of the dissipation rate obey the scaling recently discovered in wind tunnel experiments (Vassilicos 2015 Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech. 47 95–114 ) instead of the Taylor dissipation law. The Taylor dissipation law does not hold because the local equilibrium hypothesis does not hold in a relatively low wave-number range. The breakdown of this hypothesis is caused by the finite time needed for the energy at such large scales to reach the dissipative scale by the scale-by-scale energy cascade.