Effects of friction on forced two-dimensional Navier-Stokes turbulence

Large-scale dissipation mechanisms have been routinely employed in numerical simulations of two-dimensional turbulence to absorb energy at large scales, presumably mimicking the quasisteady picture of Kraichnan in an unbounded fluid. Here, "side effects" of such a mechanism-mechanical friction-on the small-scale dynamics of forced two-dimensional Navier-Stokes turbulence are elaborated by both theoretical and numerical analysis. Given a positive friction coefficient a, viscous dissipation of enstrophy has been known to vanish in the inviscid limit nu -> 0. This effectively renders the scale-neutral friction the only mechanism responsible for enstrophy dissipation in that limit. The resulting dynamical picture is that the classical enstrophy inertial range becomes a dissipation range in which the dissipation of enstrophy by friction mainly occurs. For each alpha > 0, there exists a critical viscosity nu(c), which depends on physical parameters, separating the regimes of predominant viscous and frictional dissipation of enstrophy. It is found that nu(c) = [eta'(1/3)/(Ck(f)(2))] exp[-eta'(1/3)/(C alpha)], where eta' is half the enstrophy injection rate, k(f) is the forcing wave number, and C is a nondimensional constant (the Kraichnan-Batchelor constant). The present results have important theoretical and practical implications. Apparently, mechanical friction is a poor choice in numerical attempts to address fundamental issues concerning the direct enstrophy transfer in two-dimensional Navier-Stokes turbulence. Furthermore, as relatively strong friction naturally occurs on the surfaces and at lateral boundaries of experimental fluids as well as at the interfaces of shallow layers in geophysical fluid models, the frictional effects discussed in this study are crucial in understanding the dynamics of these systems.