Hyperbolicity, shadowing directions and sensitivity analysis of a turbulent three-dimensional flow

Abstract: This paper uses compressible flow simulation to analyze the hyperbolicity, shadowing directions, and sensitivities of a weakly turbulent three dimensional cylinder flow at Reynolds number 525 and Mach number 0.1. By computing the first 40 Covariant Lyapunov Vectors (CLVs), we find that unstable CLVs are active in the near-wake region, whereas stable CLVs are active in the far-wake region. This phenomenon is related to hyperbolicity since it shows that CLVs point to different directions; it also suggests that for open flows there is a large fraction of CLVs that are stable. However, due to the extra neutral CLV and the occasional tangencies between CLVs, our system is not uniform hyperbolic. By the Non-intrusive least-squares shadowing (NILSS) algorithm, we compute shadowing directions and sensitivities of long-time-averaged objectives. Our results suggest that shadowing methods may be valid for general chaotic fluid problems.