Helical Turbulence

My research focuses on helically symmetric turbulence as an attempt to bridge the gap bewteen 2D and 3D turbulence. By exploiting helical symmetry, new infinite classes of conservation laws have been found - generalized helicity and enstrophy (Kelbin et al., 2013). These conservation laws reveal that the presence or absence of vortex stretching significantly influence the flow, and so, the transition between 2D and 3D turbulence. A central part of my work is the refinement and extension of a high-order discontinuous Galerkin solver for the helically reduced Navier-Stokes equations (Dierkes et al., 2021), enabling simulations at high Reynolds numbers and giving us the oppertunity to validate theoretical predictions against numerical results.