Interpretation of the mechanism associated with turbulent drag reduction in terms of anisotropy invariants

A central goal of flow control is to minimize the energy consumption in turbulent flows and nowadays the best results in terms of drag reduction are obtained with the addition of long-chain polymers. This has been found to be associated with increased anisotropy of turbulence in the near-wall region. Other drag reduction mechanisms are analysed in this respect and it is shown that close to the wall highly anisotropic states of turbulence are commonly found. These findings are supported by results of direct numerical simulations which display high drag reduction effects of over 30% when only a few points inside the viscous sublayer are forced towards high anisotropy.