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  • Letter
  • Open Access

How walls shape dissipation intermittency

Peng-Yu Duan1, Xi Chen1,*, and Katepalli R. Sreenivasan2,†

  • 1Key Laboratory of Fluid Mechanics of Ministry of Education, Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Beijing 100191, People's Republic of China
  • 2Tandon School of Engineering, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and Department of Physics, New York University, New York, New York 10012, USA

  • *Contact author: chenxi97@outlook.com
  • †Contact author: krs3@nyu.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L032016 – Published 30 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/lsvn-mfrb

Abstract

Intermittency of energy dissipation has long been studied via high-order moments in homogeneous and isotropic turbulence (HIT), but not much where the boundary effects are explicitly included. Here, we derive two fundamental Reynolds number scaling expressions for dissipation moments in wall-bounded flows—one in the outer region where the boundary effects are weak and the other close to the walls where those effects are strong—and support these expressions by direct numerical simulations. Dissipation moments in the outer region follow universal power laws with exponents linked to anomalous scaling of velocity structure functions in HIT. In contrast, moments near the wall follow a bounded defect law, leading to a finite asymptotic limit without intermittency. For very large Reynolds numbers, the outer proposal predicts vanishing dissipation compared to that on the wall, highlighting the need for solid boundaries in generating Onsager-type singularities.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L032016– Published 30 July, 2026
  • Received 22 June 2025
  • Accepted 19 May 2026
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