Twenty years of experimental and direct numerical simulation access to the velocity gradient tensor: What have we learned about turbulence?a)

Twenty years ago there was no experimental access to the velocity gradient tensor for turbulent flows. Without such access, knowledge of fundamental and defining properties of turbulence, such as vorticity dissipation, and strain rates and helicity, could not be studied in the laboratory. Although a few direct simulations at very low Reynolds numbers had been performed, most of these did not focus on properties of the small scales of turbulence defined by the velocity gradient tensor. In 1987 the results of the development and first successful use of a multisensor hot-wire probe for simultaneous measurements of all the components of the velocity gradient tensor in a turbulent boundary layer were published by Balint et al. [Advances in Turbulence: Proceedings of the First European Turbulence Conference (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1987), p. 456]. That same year measurements of all but one of the terms in the velocity gradient tensor were carried out, although not simultaneously, in the self-preserving regio...