Helicity fluctuations in incompressible turbulent flows

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Abstract
Results from direct numerical simulations of several homogeneous flows and fully developed turbulent channel flow indicate that the probability distribution function (pdf) of relative helicity density exhibits at most a 20% deviation from a flat distribution. Isotropic flows exhibit a slight helical nature but the presence of mean strain in homogeneous turbulence suppresses helical behavior. All the homogeneous turbulent flows studied show no correlation between relative helicity density and the dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy. The channel flow simulations indicate that, except for low‐dissipation regions near the outer edge of the buffer layer, there is no tendency for the flow to be helical. The strong peaks in the relative helicity density pdf and the association of these peaks with regions of low dissipation found in previous simulations by Pelz et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 5 4, 2505 (1985)] are not observed.