Numerical dissipation and the bottleneck effect in simulations of compressible isotropic turbulence

The piece-wise parabolic method (PPM) is applied to simulations of forced isotropic turbulence with Mach numbers ∼0.1 … 1. The equation of state is dominated by the Fermi pressure of an electron-degenerate fluid. The dissipation in these simulations is of purely numerical origin. For the dimensionless mean rate of dissipation, we find values in agreement with known results from mostly incompressible turbulence simulations. The calculation of a Smagorinsky length corresponding to the rate of numerical dissipation supports the notion of the PPM supplying an implicit subgrid scale model. In the turbulence energy spectra of various flow realisations, we find the so-called bottleneck phenomenon, i.e., a flattening of the spectrum function near the wave number of maximal dissipation. The shape of the bottleneck peak in the compensated spectrum functions is comparable to what is found in turbulence simulations with hyperviscosity. Although the bottleneck effect reduces the range of nearly inertial length scales considerably, we are able to estimate the value of the Kolmogorov constant. For steady turbulence with a balance between energy injection and dissipation, it appears that C ≈ 1.7. However, a smaller value is found in the case of transonic turbulence with a large fraction of compressive components in the driving force. Moreover, we discuss length scales related to the dissipation, in particular, an effective numerical length scale Δeff, which can be regarded as the characteristic smoothing length of the implicit filter associated with the PPM.