Development of high vorticity structures in incompressible 3D Euler equations

We perform the systematic numerical study of high vorticity structures that develop in the 3D incompressible Euler equations from generic large-scale initial conditions. We observe that a multitude of high vorticity structures appear in the form of thin vorticity sheets (pancakes). Our analysis reveals the self-similarity of the pancakes evolution, which is governed by two different exponents e−t/Tℓ and et/Tω describing compression in the transverse direction and the vorticity growth, respectively, with the universal ratio Tℓ/Tω ≈ 2/3. We relate development of these structures to the gradual formation of the Kolmogorov energy spectrum Ek ∝ k−5/3, which we observe in a fully inviscid system. With the spectral analysis, we demonstrate that the energy transfer to small scales is performed through the pancake structures, which accumulate in the Kolmogorov interval of scales and evolve according to the scaling law ωmax ∝ ℓ−2/3 for the local vorticity maximums ωmax and the transverse pancake scales ℓ.