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Turbulence in the Atmosphere 1st Edition John C.
Wyngaard Digital Instant Download
Author(s): John C. Wyngaard
ISBN(s): 9780521887694, 0521887690
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 3.99 MB
Year: 2010
Language: english
This page intentionally left blank
TURBULENCE IN THE ATMOSPHERE

This book provides a modern introduction to turbulence in the atmosphere


and in engineering flows. Based on over 40 years of research and teaching,
John Wyngaard’s textbook is an excellent introduction to turbulence for advanced
students and a reference work for researchers in the atmospheric sciences. Part I
introduces the concepts and equations of turbulence. It includes a rigorous introduc-
tion to the principal types of numerical modeling of turbulent flows. Part II describes
turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer. Part III covers the foundations of the
statistical representation of turbulence and includes illustrative examples of stochas-
tic problems that can be solved analytically. Student exercises are included at the
ends of chapters, and worked solutions are available online for use by course instruc-
tors. The book is an invaluable introduction to turbulence for advanced students and
researchers in academia and industry in the atmospheric sciences and meteorology,
as well as related fields in aeronautical, mechanical and environmental engineering,
oceanography, applied mathematics, and physics.

John Wyngaard’s experience in turbulence research and teaching spans the Air
Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, the Wave Propagation Laboratory of the
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, the
Atmospheric Analysis and Prediction Division of the National Center for Atmo-
spheric Research (NCAR), and the Department of Meteorology at Pennsylvania
State University, where he developed a sequence of courses on turbulence. This
book is based on those courses. He has published over 100 refereed journal papers
covering theoretical, observational, and numerical modeling aspects of engineering
and geophysical turbulence.
TURBULENCE IN THE
ATMOSPHERE

JOHN C. WYNGAARD
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo

Cambridge University Press


The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521887694
© John C. Wyngaard 2010

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the


provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part
may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2010

ISBN-13 978-0-511-76846-0 eBook (EBL)


ISBN-13 978-0-521-88769-4 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy


of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Contents

Preface page ix

Part I A grammar of turbulence 1

1 Introduction 3
1.1 Turbulence, its community, and our approach 3
1.2 The origins and nature of turbulence 4
1.3 Turbulence and surface fluxes 5
1.4 How do we study turbulence? 10
1.5 The equations of turbulence 11
1.6 Key properties of turbulence 14
1.7 Numerical modeling of turbulent flows 18
1.8 Physical modeling of turbulent flows 20
1.9 The impact of Kolmogorov 20

2 Getting to know turbulence 27


2.1 Average and instantaneous properties contrasted 27
2.2 Averaging 28
2.3 Ergodicity 34
2.4 The convergence of averages 35
2.5 The turbulence spectrum and the eddy velocity scale 38
2.6 Turbulent vorticity 43
2.7 Turbulent pressure 44
2.8 Eddy diffusivity 45
2.9 Reynolds-number similarity 49
2.10 Coherent structures 49

v
vi Contents

3 Equations for averaged variables 55


3.1 Introduction 55
3.2 Ensemble-averaged equations 56
3.3 Interpreting the ensemble-averaged equations 59
3.4 Space-averaged equations 65
3.5 Summary 70

4 Turbulent fluxes 75
4.1 Introduction 75
4.2 Temperature flux in a boundary layer 76
4.3 Mass flux in scalar diffusion 78
4.4 Momentum flux in channel flow 83
4.5 The “mixture length” 84
4.6 Summary 85

5 Conservation equations for covariances 89


5.1 Introduction and background 89
5.2 The fluctuation equations 90
5.3 Example: The scalar variance equation 91
5.4 The scalar flux and Reynolds stress budgets 99
5.5 Applications 101
5.6 From the covariance equations to turbulence models 106

6 Large-eddy dynamics, the energy cascade, and large-eddy


simulation 115
6.1 Introduction 115
6.2 More on space averaging 116
6.3 A “thought problem”: equilibrium homogeneous turbulence 120
6.4 Application to flows homogeneous in two dimensions 127
6.5 The physical mechanisms of interscale transfer 129
6.6 Large-eddy simulation 130

7 Kolmogorov scaling, its extensions, and two-dimensional


turbulence 145
7.1 The inertial subrange 145
7.2 Applications of inertial-range scaling 151
7.3 The dissipative range 153
7.4 Revised Kolmogorov scaling 159
7.5 Two-dimensional turbulence 163
Contents vii

Part II Turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer 173

8 The equations of atmospheric turbulence 175


8.1 Introduction 175
8.2 The governing equations for a dry atmosphere 175
8.3 Accounting for water vapor, liquid water, and phase change 182
8.4 The averaged equations for moist air 185

9 The atmospheric boundary layer 193


9.1 Overview 193
9.2 The surface energy balance 197
9.3 Buoyancy effects 198
9.4 Average vs. instantaneous structure 204
9.5 Quasi-steadiness and local homogeneity 204
9.6 The mean-momentum equations 205

10 The atmospheric surface layer 215


10.1 The “constant-flux” layer 215
10.2 Monin–Obukhov similarity 217
10.3 Asymptotic behavior of M-O similarity 225
10.4 Deviations from M-O similarity 228

11 The convective boundary layer 241


11.1 Introduction 241
11.2 The mixed layer: velocity fields 241
11.3 The mixed layer: conserved-scalar fields 252
11.4 The interfacial layer 259

12 The stable boundary layer 267


12.1 Introduction 267
12.2 The late-afternoon ABL transition over land 273
12.3 The quasi-steady SBL 281
12.4 The evolving SBL 286
12.5 Modeling the equilibrium height of neutral and stable ABLs 288

Part III Statistical representation of turbulence 295

13 Probability densities and distributions 297


13.1 Introduction 297
13.2 Probability statistics of scalar functions of a single variable 298
viii Contents

13.3 Examples of probability densities 302


13.4 The evolution equation for the probability density 308

14 Isotropic tensors 313


14.1 Introduction 313
14.2 Cartesian tensors 313
14.3 Determining the form of isotropic tensors 314
14.4 Implications of isotropy 316
14.5 Local isotropy 319

15 Covariances, autocorrelations, and spectra 331


15.1 Introduction 331
15.2 Scalar functions of a single variable 331
15.3 Scalar functions of space and time 337
15.4 Vector functions of space and time 341
15.5 Joint vector and scalar functions of space and time 350
15.6 Spectra in the plane 351

16 Statistics in turbulence analysis 361


16.1 Evolution equations for spectra 361
16.2 The analysis and interpretation of turbulence signals 369
16.3 Probe-induced flow distortion 378

Index 387
Preface

I doubt if many students have started out to be a “turbulence person.” I suspect it


usually just happens, perhaps like meeting the person you marry. I was an engineer-
ing graduate student, nibbling at convective heat transfer, when a friend steered me
to a turbulence course taught by John Lumley. It was not rollicking fun – we went
through Townsend’s The Structure of Turbulent Shear Flow page by page – but it
was a completely new field.
I began to explore the turbulence literature, particularly that by the heavy hitters
of theoretical physics and applied mathematics. To my engineering eyes it was
impregnable; I would need much more coursework before I could even put it in
a context. Today I can understand why those theoretical struggles continue. Phil
Thompson, a senior scientist in the early NCAR† explained it this way:
Lots of people have tried to develop a fundamental theory of turbulence. Some very well
known people have given up on it. But I just can’t give up on it – it’s like a beautiful mistress.
You know that she treats you badly, she’s being ornery, but you just can’t stay away from
her. So periodically, this question comes up again in my mind, and I keep casting about for
some different and simple and natural way of representing the motion of a fluid, and some
way of treating the analytical difficulties. And I seem to get a little bit closer sometimes …
When I was finishing my Ph.D. I began looking for a job. Hans Panofsky, whose
1964 book with John steered me toward atmospheric turbulence, kindly gave me a
list of four prospects. The most intriguing was the Boundary-Layer Branch of Air
Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, as it was then called. Led by the indefati-
gable Duane Haugen, they were in the final stages of planning a field measurement
program on atmospheric surface-layer turbulence. It was as if the job were designed
for me. I accepted their $12,822 per year offer.
One year later we carried out the 1968 Kansas experiment, perhaps the most
ambitious such field program up to that time. The data analyses engaged us for

† National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado.

ix
x Preface

several years. Owen Coté and I, with the plotting and programming assistance
of Jack Izumi and Jean O’Donnell, mapped out perhaps the first observational
analyses of the conservation equations for stress and scalar flux in a turbulent
flow. Chandran Kaimal did his inimitable spectral analyses. Visitor Joost Businger
oversaw the analysis of the flux-mean profile relations over the wide range of
stability conditions. Henk Tennekes and I found that velocity derivative statistics
in the huge Reynolds number Kansas turbulence were off the older charts, but in
accord with the newer thinking of the Russian school. Those were heady times.
We returned to the field in 1973, in the very flat farming country of northwestern
Minnesota. In collaboration with a British Met Office group we reached deep into
the boundary layer with sensors on the tethering cable of a World War II surplus
barrage balloon. It stayed up for several weeks, despite the best late-night efforts
of rifle-toting cowboys, until it was brought down by a gust front. Part II discusses
some of the insights gained from these field programs.
Today’s main types of turbulent-flow models – large-eddy simulation and second-
order closure (Chapters 5 and 6) – were in their infancy in 1970. I remember
discovering with Owen Coté the myriad ways a second-order-closure model could
misbehave – negative variances, violations of Schwartz’s inequality, … What we
thought were obviously better closures gave poorer results. We saw the early hopes
of universal second-order closures dashed in buoyancy-dominated flows. We devel-
oped a wariness about turbulence modeling. As Ronald Reagan later said, “Trust,
but verify.”
Anyone who has developed models of the second-moment equations (Chapter 5),
discovered how poorly they can behave, and then in fatigue and discouragement
wondered how Nature keeps variances positive, can appreciate this story:
Some years ago, during the hall talk at a break in an NCAR meeting, a prominent senior sci-
entist became impatient with a mathematician’s fussing over obscure details of an equation.
“Hell,” he blurted, “in the atmospheric sciences we don’t even know what the equations are.”
The applied turbulence field seems different today. Numerical modeling of tur-
bulent flows is a dominant technology used by a second- or even third-generation
community. Programmers have ensured that the codes don’t misbehave like they
used to. Geophysical observations have not kept pace with the model predictions,
nor could they have; modeling and observational work have cruelly different time
scales. Now less likely to be rooted in personal experience, wariness of modeling
seems to be diminishing.
Recently I previewed a video of the EPA Fluid-Modeling Facility before showing
it in my class on atmospheric dispersion. The FMF, as it is called, is located in
Raleigh, NC, and contains low-speed wind tunnels, a stratified towing tank, and
a replica of the Deardorff–Willis convection tank (Chapter 11). The FMF is a
world-class facility put together largely by Bill Snyder beginning about 1970.
Preface xi

The video shows visualizations of plume dispersion, wind-tunnel turbulence, and


stably stratified flow around obstacles. Two students stopped briefly to watch, and
as they left one said to the other, “That was before we had computer modeling.”
Fortunately, EPA management recognizes the FMF’s strengths and continues its
funding for observations central to the testing and improving of dispersion models.
For a generation born into personal computing, numerical modeling is a natural
research medium. Models are widely and instantly available, some through vendors,
others being in the public domain. But in a time when observational work seems
increasingly out of fashion, when a “sixth sense” about the behavior of turbulence
is becoming rare, models can be easily misused and misinterpreted. We have no
“Modeler General”; the models have no warning labels.
I suspect this lack of wariness about modeling is an experiential issue, not a gen-
erational one. I recall attending an AMS-EPA workshop on air-quality modeling in
the 1980s. At one point the discussion focused on the performance of the standard
Gaussian-plume air-quality model in fair weather, flat terrain, quasi-steady condi-
tions. The question was asked: “How well do the model predictions of ground-level
concentration downwind of a point source agree with one-hour measurements?”
A crusty old air-quality “consultant,” as they are called, who had enjoyed a long,
successful practice, didn’t hestitate in answering: “Within ten percent.” No doubt
that was his honest belief, but we now know it was wrong by more than an order
of magnitude. The community hadn’t yet focused on such considerations.
This book is based on the material in the graduate course in atmospheric tur-
bulence I have taught for nearly 20 years at Penn State. Its four precepts are
(1) engineering and geophysical turbulence have much in common; (2) our numer-
ical models of turbulent flows, particularly those in the atmosphere, need effective
representations of turbulence; (3) although the “turbulence problem” appears to be
as unyielding as ever, we have learned much about dealing with turbulence; (4)
users of turbulent-flow models should understand their foundations.
There are three self-contained parts. Part I, “A grammar of turbulence,” covers
the important attributes, concepts, rules, and tools of turbulence – those aspects that
are common to all applications fields and are central to turbulence literacy. Done in
a constant-density fluid, it begins with an overview of turbulence, including the con-
trast between its instantaneous and average properties, the averaging process and its
convergence, the eddy velocity scale and turbulence spectrum, turbulent vorticity,
and the eddy diffusivity. We then average the equations, over space or an ensemble
of realizations, and discuss the turbulent fluxes this produces. There is a chapter
each on the ensemble-average fluxes and their conservation equations, including
their modeling by “second-order closure.” A chapter on the space-averaged equa-
tions, the basis of large-eddy simulation, demonstrates the spectral energy cascade
and explains the physical basis of the Kolmogorov hypotheses about the inertial
xii Preface

subrange. The final chapter covers the dissipative range, both as hypothesized in
1941 by Kolmogorov and more recently through dissipation-intermittency models,
and two-dimensional turbulence as described through the Kolmogorov-like notions
of Kraichnan and Batchelor.
Part II covers turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The first
chapter generalizes the equations of Part I to a variable density environment in a
standard way, using a background-plus-deviation representation for density, tem-
perature, and pressure. The background state is hydrostatic, buoyancy is handled
through the Boussinesq approximation, and a conserved temperature is used that
in its ultimate form allows phase change. The four subsequent chapters survey the
structure and dynamics of the ABL, emphasizing for a non-meteorological audi-
ence those features that make its turbulence different from that in engineering flows.
They also cover turbulence in the surface layer, and discuss in depth the physics and
the efficacy of the Monin–Obukhov similarity hypothesis for its turbulence struc-
ture. There is a chapter on the convective boundary layer, whose turbulence physics
and structure have been extensively studied in the field and through large-eddy
simulation. The final chapter covers the stable ABL, which has some regimes in
which turbulence structure and dynamics have a reasonably simple interpretation.
Part III, “Statistical representation of turbulence,” includes a number of important
statistical tools and concepts – probability densities and distributions, covariances,
autocorrelations, spectra, and local isotropy – that are used in turbulence and other
stochastic problems. It has a number of illustrative examples of stochastic prob-
lems that can be solved analytically, including the wavenumber-space dynamics
of turbulence spectra; relating spectra in the plane to traditional spectra; and the
effects of spatial averaging, sensor separation, crosstalk, and probe-induced flow
distortion on turbulence measurements.
In the course of writing this book I received valuable input on technical mat-
ters from Bob Antonia, Bob Beare, Craig Bohren, Frank Bradley, Peter Bradshaw,
Jim Brasseur, Joost Businger, Steve Clifford, Steve Derbyshire, Diego Donzis,
Carl Friehe, Steve Hatlee, Reg Hill, Bert Holtslag, Tom Horst, Mark Kelly, Don
Lenschow, Charles Meneveau, Chin-Hoh Moeng, Parviz Moin, Ricardo Munoz,
Laurent Mydlarski, Bill Neff, Ray Shaw, K. R. Sreenivasan, Peter Sullivan, Dennis
Thomson, Chenning Tong, Zellman Warhaft, Jeff Weil, Keith Wilson, P. K. Yeung,
and Sergej Zilitinkevich, for which I am most grateful. I’d like to thank Lori Mattina
for expertly and patiently crafting the figures, Ned Patton for kindly setting up the
LATEX style files for me, and Peter Sullivan again for his generous and sustained
assistance with LATEX. I am grateful to the AFCRL group – Duane Haugen, Chan-
dran Kaimal, Owen Coté, Jack Izumi, Jim Newman, Jean O’Donnell, and Don
Stevens – for my once-in-a-lifetime experience in the 1968 Kansas experiment.
Finally, I thank John Lumley for inspiring my career in turbulence.
Part I
A grammar of turbulence
1
Introduction

1.1 Turbulence, its community, and our approach


Even if you have not studied turbulence, you already know a lot about it. You
have seen the chaotic, ever-changing, three-dimensional nature of chimney plumes
and flowing streams. You know that turbulence is a good mixer. You might have
come across an article that described the intrigue it holds for mathematicians and
physicists.
Unless a fluid flow has a low Reynolds number or very stable stratification (less
dense fluid over more dense fluid), it is turbulent. Most flows in engineering, in
the lower atmosphere, and in the upper ocean are turbulent. Because of its “mathe-
matical intractability” – turbulence does not yield exact mathematical solutions – its
study has always involved observations. But over the past three decades numerical
approaches have proliferated; today they are a dominant means of studying turbulent
flows.
Turbulence has long been studied in both engineering and geophysics.
G. I. Taylor’s contributions spanned both (Batchelor, 1996). The Lumley and
Panofsky (1964) work was my introduction to that breadth, but as Lumley later
commented, their parts of that text “just … touch.” Today the turbulence field seems
more coherent than it was in 1964, although it still has subcommunities and dialects
(Lumley and Yaglom, 2001).
In Part I of this book we focus on the physical understanding of turbulence, sur-
veying its key properties. We’ll use its governing equations to guide our discussions
and inferences. We shall also discuss the main types of numerical approaches to
turbulence. You might be concerned by our use of little mathematical “tricks” –
not because they’re complicated or difficult, but because you’ve never seen them
before and might not have thought of them yourself. Don’t worry: we pass them
on because they are some of the useful tools developed over the many years that
scholars have pondered turbulence. You can pass them on too.

3
4 Introduction

Figure 1.1 Instability of an axisymmetric jet. A laminar stream of air flows from a
circular tube at the left at Reynolds number 10 000 and is made visible by a smoke
wire. The edge of the jet develops axisymmetric oscillations, rolls up into vortex
rings, and then abruptly becomes turbulent. Photograph courtesy Robert Drubka
and Hassan Nagib. From Van Dyke (1982).

1.2 The origins and nature of turbulence


Turbulent rather than smooth, laminar flow of a fluid, liquid or gas, normally occurs
if a dimensionless flow parameter called the Reynolds number Re = U L/ν exceeds
a critical value. Here U and L are velocity and length scales of the flow† and ν
is the kinematic viscosity (dynamic viscosity μ/density ρ) of the fluid. The atmo-
spheric boundary layer is turbulent, but as we shall see in Part II stable density
stratification can strongly modulate its depth and the intensity and scale of its tur-
bulence. Winter sunrises here in central Pennsylvania often reveal laminar chimney
plumes in the very stably stratified flow caused by the overnight cooling of the
earth’s surface. The turbulent eddies‡ so prominent in cumulus clouds and flow-
ing streams can be revealed in laboratory turbulence through flow-visualization
techniques (Figure 1.1).
There are two types of turbulence with quite different physics. The most common
type, three-dimensional turbulence, arises from the tendency of fluid motion of large
Re to be turbulent and the tendency of turbulence to be three dimensional. But two-
dimensional turbulence is also of interest; it causes the darting of the colors in soap
films and is a model of the largest-scale motions of the atmosphere. We shall discuss
it in Chapter 7.

† For example, in Figure 1.1 U is the velocity averaged over the tube cross section and L is the tube diameter.
‡ To paraphrase Batchelor (1950), “eddy” does not refer to any specific local distribution of velocity; it is simply a
concise term for local turbulent motion with a certain length scale – an arbitrary local flow pattern characterized
by size alone. A turbulent flow has a spectrum of eddies of different size, determined by an analysis of the
velocity field into sinusoidal components of different wavelengths (Chapter 15).
1.3 Turbulence and surface fluxes 5

hr
f

uave D
Re=
n

Figure 1.2 The Moody chart, which shows the behavior of the Darcy friction factor
f , Eq. (1.5), in a circular pipe. In laminar flow f ∝ Re−1 , Eq. (1.6); f jumps to
larger values with the transition to turbulence at Re  2000, and in the region of
equilibrium turbulence past the critical zone f depends also on the wall-roughness
height hr relative to D. Adapted from Moody (1944).

1.3 Turbulence and surface fluxes


An early motivation for the study of turbulence was to understand how it makes
the fluxes of momentum, heat, and mass at a solid surface much larger than in the
laminar case. This has important applications to both geophysical and engineering
flows.
Fluid flowing through a long circular pipe becomes turbulent at some point
downstream if the Reynolds number Re = uave D/ν (uave is the velocity aver-
aged over the pipe cross section and D is the pipe diameter) exceeds about
2000. This transition to turbulence, as it is called, is marked by a jump in the
shear stress (which is also interpretable as a momentum flux, Section 1.5) at the
wall (Figure 1.2). There is a corresponding jump in the required pumping power
(Problem 1.1).
To understand these abrupt changes at transition we need some background on
pipe flow. In the steady, laminar case its velocity profile is parabolic (Problem 1.1),
 
r2
u(r) = umax 1 − 2 , (1.1)
R
6 Introduction

where r is the radial coordinate, R = D/2 is the pipe radius, and umax is the
maximum (centerline) velocity. The velocity averaged over the cross section is
 R
1 umax
uave = u(r)2π r dr = . (1.2)
π R2 0 2

The wall shear stress is



∂u  uave
τwall = −μ  = 8μ , (1.3)
∂r r=R D

with μ the dynamic viscosity of the fluid. Since ∂p/∂x does not depend on x
(Problem 1.1), we can write the axial force balance on a slug of fluid of length L
and diameter D as

∂P π D 2 ∂P
τwall π DL = − L , so that − D = 4τwall . (1.4)
∂x 4 ∂x

The mean pressure gradient nondimensionalized with ρ(uave )2 /2 and D is called


the Darcy friction factor,†

− ∂P
∂x D 4τwall
f ≡ 2
= . (1.5)
ρ(uave ) /2 ρ(uave )2 /2

Thus f is, from Eq. (1.3),

64μuave 64
flam = 2
= . (1.6)
Dρ(uave ) Re

Figure 1.2 shows this inverse-Re dependence of f in the laminar-flow regime.


Past the critical zone, Figure 1.2, uave and τwall are turbulent quantities, so (as
we’ll discuss in detail in Chapter 2) we work with their mean values uave and τ wall .
In the turbulent regime Eq. (1.5) implies τ wall = fturb ρ(uave )2 /8. Therefore the
ratio of the mean wall stress in turbulent pipe flow and the wall stress in laminar
flow at the same average velocity is

τ wall fturb fturb Re


= = . (1.7)
τwall (laminar flow) flam 64

† The Fanning friction factor is the wall stress nondimensionalized with ρ(uave )2 /2. The Darcy friction factor,
Eq. (1.5), is larger by a factor of four.
1.3 Turbulence and surface fluxes 7

Re

Figure 1.3 The ratios of mean fluxes at the wall in turbulent and laminar flow
through smooth pipes. The momentum-flux ratio is Eq. (1.7) evaluated with f
data from Figure 1.2; the heat-flux ratio is Eq. (1.16) evaluated with Nu data from
Dittus and Boelter (1930), as summarized by Turns (2006).

This ratio is plotted for smooth pipes in Figure 1.3. It has very large values at large
Re, indicating the strong influence of turbulence on the wall stress.
Turns (2006) shows that a good fit to the classical mean-velocity measurements
of Nikuradse (1933) in turbulent pipe flow is
  
u(r) f 1/2 Re f 1/2  r
= √ 2.5ln √ 1− + 5.5 . (1.8)
uave 2 2 2 R
Figure 1.4 shows that this profile is much “flatter” in the core region than the laminar
profile (1.1). At large Re the mean-velocity gradient is significant only adjacent
to the wall, where it is much larger than in laminar flow of the same bulk fluid
velocity. The wall stress in turbulent flow is still defined by the velocity gradient at
the wall, Eq. (1.3), but that gradient, and therefore the wall shear stress, fluctuates
chaotically with time and with position. The mean value (which we designate by
an overbar) of the wall stress is
 
∂u  ∂u 
τ wall = −μ  = −μ  . (1.9)
∂r r=R ∂r r=R
We have used the property that the differentiation and averaging can be done in
either order (Problem 1.3). The sharp increase in the mean-velocity gradient at the
wall at transition (Figure 1.4) causes a sharp increase in wall stress (Figure 1.2).
8 Introduction

u
uave

Figure 1.4 Profiles of u/uave in turbulent pipe flow, Eq. (1.8), “flatten” as the
Reynolds number increases, making the mean shear and mean stress at the wall
much larger than in laminar flow with the same average velocity.

Pipes typically have some wall roughness, and Figure 1.2 indicates that the mean
wall stress increases with that roughness. The explanation (Kundu, 1990) is that
immediately adjacent to the wall in turbulent pipe flow is a laminar sublayer of
thickness δ ∼ 5ν/u∗ , with u∗ = (τ wall /ρ)1/2 the friction velocity. If the typ-
ical height hr of the individual “bumps” or roughness elements on the wall is
much less than δ, wall roughness has minimal effect and the mean wall stress is
the viscous one given by Eq. (1.9). But as hr approaches δ the roughness ele-
ments cause form drag through the pressure distribution on their surface, which
adds to the viscous drag and increases the friction factor f . When hr is large
enough this form drag dominates and f ceases to change with Re, as indicated in
Figure 1.2.
An analogous situation exists for the wall heat flux Hwall (watts m−2 ). It is carried
entirely by the molecular diffusion process called conduction heat transfer:

∂T 
Hwall = −k , (1.10)
∂r r=R

with k the thermal conductivity (watts m−1 K−1 ). The heat flux is continuous at
the fluid–wall interface, but the temperature gradient there is discontinuous if k of
the wall material and the fluid differ. We shall consider the fluid side.
1.3 Turbulence and surface fluxes 9

The temperature profile in fully developed laminar pipe flow depends on the
temperature boundary conditions. We’ll consider the analytically simple case where
the fluid and wall temperatures vary linearly with x but their difference, and the
wall heat flux, are independent of x. Its temperature profile is (Problem 1.2)
  
R 2 uave ∂T r2 r2
T (0, x) − T (r, x) = − 1 − , (1.11)
α ∂x 2R 2 4R 2

with α = k/(ρcp ) the thermal diffusivity of the fluid. The relation between the wall
heat flux and ∂T /∂x is (Problem 1.2)

Duave ρcp ∂T
Hwall = − , (1.12)
4 ∂x
so the temperature profile (1.11) can be rewritten as
  
Hwall D r 2 r2
T (0, x) − T (r, x) = 1− . (1.13)
k 2R 2 4R 2

The wall heat flux made dimensionless with pipe diameter D, fluid thermal
conductivity k, and a temperature difference T is called a Nusselt number Nu:

Hwall D
Nu = . (1.14)
k T
T is defined through the wall temperature Tw (x) and the “bulk fluid temperature”
at that position, Tb (x):
R
u(r) T (r, x) 2π r dr Hwall D
Tb (x) = 0
, Nu = . (1.15)
2
π R uave k(Tb − Tw )

Turns (2006) shows that in the laminar case in this problem Nu  4.4.
In the turbulent case the heat flux at a point on the wall, like the stress there,
fluctuates chaotically in time. The turbulent mixing makes the mean temperature
gradient relatively small over most of the cross section; it is large only near the wall,
as for velocity (Figure 1.4). The mean wall heat flux, the product of the fluid thermal
conductivity k and the mean temperature gradient at the wall, is much larger than
in the laminar case.
From Eq. (1.14) in this problem we can write the ratio of wall heat fluxes as, for
given values of D, k, and T ,

H wall Nu Nu
= = . (1.16)
Hwall (laminar flow) Nu(laminar flow) 4.4
10 Introduction

Figure 1.3 shows the wall-flux ratios in the turbulent regime. The ratios for heat
and momentum differ by a constant factor of about 1.5–2 (a manifestation of the
Reynolds analogy between heat and momentum transfer) as they increase sharply
with Reynolds number.
If the flow over the earth’s surface were laminar, not turbulent, the environmental
effects would be profound. In clear summer weather, for example, the earth’s surface
temperature could routinely approach 100 ◦ C during the day and 0 ◦ C at night
(Chapter 9).

1.4 How do we study turbulence?


Turbulence has long had a special attraction for physicists and mathematicians; it
has been called “the last great unsolved problem of classical physics.”† In practical
terms this means that we cannot analytically solve the equations of turbulent fluid
motion. The difficulty stems from their nonlinearity.
Leonardo da Vinci sketched turbulent water flows, and reportedly gave the sage
advice: “Remember when discoursing on the flow of water to adduce first experi-
ence and then reason.”‡ Even today, some 500 years after da Vinci, much of our
understanding of turbulence is rooted in observations.
Since the 1960s turbulence has been studied numerically as well. One early
study had a revolutionary impact. Lorenz (1963) discovered the profound effects of
very small changes in initial conditions on the behavior of a very simplified, three-
equation, nonlinear model of turbulent convection. He found that two solutions with
slightly different initial conditions diverged with time. This sensitive dependence on
initial conditions is now recognized as a fundamental property of turbulence. Gleick
(1987) describes Lorenz’ findings as the beginning of the field now called chaos.
The advances in digital computers and numerical techniques for solving differ-
ential equations after Lorenz’ early work soon allowed the numerical simulation
of turbulence. There are two varieties. Direct numerical simulation (DNS) is the
numerical solution of the governing fluid equations. It is (within the numerical
approximations used) exact, but it is possible only in low Reynolds number flows
(Problem 1.9). The Orszag–Patterson (1972) 32 × 32 × 32 (323 ) calculation of
isotropic turbulence is considered the first DNS. Large-eddy simulation (LES) is an
approximate technique that solves for the largest-scale structure of turbulence fields;
its underlying concepts were laid out by Lilly (1967). Deardorff’s (1970a) study of
turbulent channel flow on a 24 × 14 × 20 grid mesh (6720 grid points) is widely
† According to Holmes et al. (1996), precise references to such remarks are elusive. They have been attributed
to Sommerfeld, Einstein, and Feynman, and beginning in 1895 Horace Lamb expressed similar sentiments in
his Hydrodynamics.
‡ Rouse and Ince (1957) state that this quote appears in the Carusi and Favaro (1924) republication of da Vinci’s
writings.
1.5 The equations of turbulence 11

cited as the first LES. DNS and LES, which now use as many as 40963  6 × 1010
grid points, are leading research tools in turbulence today.

1.5 The equations of turbulence


In the Eulerian description one expresses the fluid velocity u, for example, as
a function of position x in a fixed (relative to the earth) coordinate system, and
time t. One then seeks u(x, t) in the flow domain of interest. In the Lagrangian
description, one labels each fluid parcel (with its initial position a, for example)
and seeks its velocity history v(a, t). We will use the Eulerian description almost
exclusively; the one exception is Taylor’s solution for dispersion of effluent from a
continuous source, Chapter 4.
In Part I we shall use the equations for fluids of time-independent, uniform
density (which we shall call simply constant density), because they contain the
essence of the physics of turbulence. These equations are derived and discussed in
graduate-level fluid mechanics texts (e.g., Kundu, 1990). Buoyancy effects stem-
ming from density variations due to heat transfer or phase change can strongly
influence turbulence, particularly in the atmosphere; this is the focus of Part II.
In cartesian tensor notation the fluid continuity or mass-conservation equa-
tion is
∂ρ ∂ρui
+ = 0, (1.17)
∂t ∂xi
where ρ is fluid density, xi = (x1 , x2 , x3 ) is spatial position, and ui = (u1 , u2 , u3 )
is velocity. We use the convention that repeated Roman indices are to be summed
over 1, 2, and 3; if we do not wish to sum we use Greek indices. Equation (1.17)
says that at any point in space the time rate of change of fluid density plus the
divergence of the fluid mass flux ρui is zero. We call ρui an advective flux, a vector
that represents the amount of fluid mass flowing through unit area per unit time.
In general there is also a molecular flux that represents the diffusive effect of the
random molecular motion, but there is no molecular diffusion of fluid density.
When the fluid density is constant Eq. (1.17) reduces to
∂ui ∂u1 ∂u2 ∂u3
= + + = 0, (1.18)
∂xi ∂x1 ∂x2 ∂x3
meaning that the velocity divergence is zero. A fluid that satisfies Eq. (1.18) is
called incompressible – its density does not change with pressure. Gases at low
speeds and liquids are usually treated as incompressible.
Newton’s Second Law for a fluid is
 
Dui ∂ui ∂ui ∂p ∂σij
ρ =ρ + uj =− + ρgi + , (1.19)
Dt ∂t ∂xj ∂xi ∂xj
12 Introduction

with p the pressure, gi the gravity vector and σij the viscous stress tensor. The left
side of Eq. (1.19) is density times the total acceleration following the motion, the
sum of local and advective accelerations; the right side is the sum of the pressure-
gradient, gravity, and viscous forces. Equation (1.19) requires a nonaccelerating
coordinate system, but our earth-based coordinate system is accelerating because
the earth rotates; as a result (1.19) also needs a Coriolis term. This can be important
in atmospheric turbulence (Part II) but we shall ignore it in Part I.
Batchelor (1967) points out that when ρ is uniform one can define a pressure
s
(p , say) whose gradient exactly balances the gravity force:

∂p s
0=− + ρgi . (1.20)
∂xi

It follows that ps = ρgj xj + p0 , with p0 a constant. If we write pressure as

p = ps + pm , (1.21)

with pm a modified pressure that is due to the fluid motion, then we can write
Eq. (1.19) as
 
∂ui ∂ui ∂p m ∂σij
ρ + uj =− + , (1.22)
∂t ∂xj ∂xi ∂xj
so the gravity term does not appear explicitly. In Part I we shall use the form (1.22)
and drop the superscript m on pressure.
Using Eq. (1.18) we can write the momentum equation (1.22) as

∂ui ∂p ∂
ρ =− + −ρui uj + σij . (1.23)
∂t ∂xi ∂xj

The final term in Eq. (1.23) is in flux form. It can be interpreted as the divergence of
the total flux of momentum, the sum of advective and viscous parts. Momentum is
mass times velocity; it is a vector. The momentum flux is the amount of momentum
passing through a unit area per unit time. It is a second-order tensor quantity; it
involves two directions, that of the unit normal to the area and that of the momentum.
Its units, density times velocity squared, are equivalent to (newtons/m2 ), or stress.
Thus, we can also interpret the final term in Eq. (1.23) as the divergence of a
generalized stress.
In a incompressible Newtonian fluid the viscous stress tensor σij is a linear
function of the strain-rate tensor sij . We write this as
 
∂ui ∂uj
σij = μ + = 2μsij , (1.24)
∂xj ∂xi
1.5 The equations of turbulence 13

where μ is the dynamic viscosity and sij is


 
1 ∂ui ∂uj
sij = + . (1.25)
2 ∂xj ∂xi

It is usual to divide by density and use Eqs. (1.24) and (1.25) to write Eq. (1.19)
for a Newtonian fluid with constant viscosity as

Dui ∂ui ∂ui 1 ∂p ∂ 2 ui


= + uj =− +ν . (1.26)
Dt ∂t ∂xj ρ ∂xi ∂xj ∂xj

Quantities divided by density are called kinematic, so μ/ρ = ν is called the


kinematic viscosity. Equation (1.26) is called the Navier–Stokes equation.
The vorticity ωi is the curl of velocity; in tensor notation it is
∂uk
ωi = ij k . (1.27)
∂xj

Its conservation equation is

Dωi ∂ωi ∂ωi ∂ui ∂ 2 ωi


= + uj = ωj +ν . (1.28)
Dt ∂t ∂xj ∂xj ∂xj ∂xj

This says that the total time derivative of vorticity is the sum of a term representing
the interaction of vorticity and the velocity gradient, which we will interpret shortly,
and a molecular-diffusion term.
The statement of mass conservation for a scalar c that has no sources or sinks
(such as the mass density of a nonreacting trace constituent in the fluid) is

∂c ∂cui ∂ 2c
+ =γ , (1.29)
∂t ∂xi ∂xi ∂xi
where γ is the molecular diffusivity of c in the fluid. We can also write Eq. (1.29)
in flux form,  
∂c ∂ ∂c
=− cui − γ , (1.30)
∂t ∂xi ∂xi
which says that local time changes in c are due to the divergence of the total flux
of c, the sum of advective and molecular components.
In Part I we are considering constant-density fluids, in which the velocity
divergence vanishes, so Eq. (1.29) can also be written

Dc ∂c ∂c ∂ 2c
= + ui =γ . (1.31)
Dt ∂t ∂xi ∂xi ∂xi
14 Introduction

This says that following the fluid motion and neglecting molecular diffusion, c does
not change. We call such a scalar a conserved scalar.†
In flows where heating due to radiation, phase change, chemical reactions, and
viscous effects is negligible the thermal energy equation reduces to the same form
as Eq. (1.31),
DT ∂T ∂T ∂ 2T
= + ui =α , (1.32)
Dt ∂t ∂xi ∂xi ∂xi
where T is temperature and α is the thermal diffusivity of the fluid. Equation (1.32)
says that under these conditions temperature is a conserved variable, changing only
through conduction heat transfer.

1.6 Key properties of turbulence


Equations (1.17), (1.26), (1.28), (1.31), and (1.32) govern the evolution of the fluid
mass, velocity, vorticity, conserved scalar constituent, and temperature fields in a
constant-density, Newtonian fluid. Their turbulent solutions have properties that
distinguish them from other three-dimensional, time-dependent flow fields.‡

1.6.1 Vortex stretching and tilting: viscous dissipation


Vortex stretching is one of the mechanisms contained in the first term on the far right
of the vorticity equation (1.28). To illustrate, let’s consider a vortex with its axis in
the x1 direction, say, so the initial vorticity is ωi = (ω1 , 0, 0). Equation (1.28) says
that ignoring viscous effects the vorticity initially evolves as

Dω1 ∂u1 Dω2 ∂u2 Dω3 ∂u3


= ω1 , = ω1 , = ω1 . (1.33)
Dt ∂x1 Dt ∂x1 Dt ∂x1

If ∂u1 /∂x1 is positive (1.33) says the vortex is stretched in the x1 direction,
increasing the magnitude of ω1 . ∂u2 /∂x1 and ∂u3 /∂x1 can generate ω2 and ω3
from ω1 ; this is sometimes called vortex tilting.
In two-dimensional turbulence the velocity field is ui = [u1 (x, y), u2 (x, y), 0],
say. Then ωi = (0, 0, ω3 ) and the vortex-stretching term in Eq. (1.28) for ω3
is ω3 ∂u3 /∂x3 = 0. This demonstrates that three dimensionality is necessary for
vortex stretching.
A cascade of kinetic energy through eddies of diminishing size (Chapters 6
and 7) that terminates in viscous dissipation – the conversion of kinetic energy
into internal energy by viscous forces in the smallest eddies – is a defining feature

† Unfortunately, if the velocity divergence is nonzero the density of a mass-conserving species is not a conserved
scalar. The ratio of its density and the fluid density is a conserved scalar, however (Part II).
‡ Parts of this discussion are adapted from Lumley and Panofsky (1964).
1.6 Key properties of turbulence 15

of three-dimensional turbulence. Without viscous dissipation the kinetic energy of


turbulence could grow without bound (Problem 1.5). This kinetic-energy cascade
is a statistical concept, but it has direct implications for instantaneous turbulence
fields: it says they not only have large, prominent, energetic eddies that we can see
in clouds and smoke plumes, but they also have very much smaller eddies whose
viscous forces dissipate kinetic energy at the required rate. It is generally accepted
that vortex stretching is one physical process responsible for the generation of this
wide range of smaller eddies in three-dimensional turbulence.

1.6.2 Random, stochastic


Imagine generating turbulent flow of a certain geometry (in the laboratory, say)
any number of times. Because of the sensitivity of turbulence to inevitable small
differences in its initial state, each resulting flow, called a realization, is unique. We
call such a flow random, by which we mean different in every realization.
A property at any point in a turbulent flow has a mean value and fluctuations
about that mean. As we shall discuss in Chapter 2, the mean can in principle be
an ensemble mean, the average of values at the point over many realizations of the
flow; a time mean, which we can use in statistically steady cases to approximate
the ensemble mean; or a spatial mean, which we can use in spatially homogeneous
cases. The fluctuations about this mean are stochastic, which we define as varying
irregularly in space or time in a given realization.†
Numerical models of turbulent flows generally provide only such mean values.
The most common atmospheric-diffusion models estimate the ensemble-mean con-
centration downwind of an effluent release (although some users’ manuals call it a
time mean). But an effluent plume in the daytime atmospheric boundary layer will
fluctuate in time and space about that ensemble mean, and will behave differently
in each realization. Such concentration excursions can induce dangerously high
concentrations of toxic effluents over short periods.

1.6.3 The effective diffusivity


In turbulent flows the advective fluxes in the Navier–Stokes (1.26) and conserved
scalar constituent (1.31) equations are spatially and temporally chaotic, three
dimensional, and generally (except at solid surfaces) much larger than the molecular
fluxes. This gives turbulent flow a much greater “mixing power” or “effective diffu-
sivity” than laminar flow. But these are, to use G. I. Taylor’s term, virtual properties
of turbulence – properties of the mean flow, not of a realization. Effluents do disperse

† This distinction between random and stochastic is not always made in turbulence, but it is useful.
16 Introduction

far more rapidly in the mean chimney plume than in a laminar plume, but within any
realization local effluent concentrations can be far higher than in the mean plume.

1.6.4 Range of scales: the turbulence Reynolds number


In turbulent flows made visible by a tracer – such as finely dispersed water droplets
in clouds and aircraft contrails, and smoke in chimney plumes – we see eddies,
locally coherent structures in the velocity field. We can also see eddies through
remote sensors such as radar, sodar, and lidar, and through computer graphics in
numerically calculated turbulent flows.
The larger, energy-containing eddies of typical size  and velocity u relative
to the mean contain most of the kinetic energy of the turbulent motion.  scales
with, and is roughly the magnitude of, a characteristic flow dimension L. In the
atmospheric boundary layer, for example,  scales with the boundary-layer depth;
in a pipe flow it scales with the pipe diameter. Likewise u scales with a flow
speed U . The turbulence time scale /u, also called the eddy turnover time, is an
order-of-magnitude estimate of the typical lifetime of an energy-containing eddy
(Problem 1.10).
Since turbulence occurs in flows of large Reynolds number Re = U L/ν, the
turbulence Reynolds number Rt = u/ν, while smaller than Re, is 1. Thus
to an excellent approximation the energy-containing eddies are not directly influ-
enced by viscosity. Whenever we refer to “turbulence Reynolds number” we shall
mean Rt .
Two important findings enable us to estimate the range of eddy sizes in any
turbulent flow. The first is a paradox: the expression for , the rate of viscous
dissipation of kinetic energy per unit mass, contains the kinematic viscosity ν
(Problem 1.4), but does not depend on ν. It is determined by the inviscid, energy-
containing eddies: = (u, ) ∼ u3 /.† Second, as hypothesized by Kolmogorov
(1941)‡ the velocity and length scales υ and η of the dissipative eddies depend only
on and the kinematic viscosity ν of the fluid.§ If so, then it follows that the scales
of the dissipative eddies are

Kolmogorov velocity scale υ = (ν )1/4 ,


 3 1/4 (1.34)
Kolmogorov length scale η = ν ,

† We use ∼ in the sense of Tennekes and Lumley (1972), the implied proportionality coefficient being between
1/5 and 5, say.
‡ This and other classic papers on turbulence are included in a collection by Friedlander and Topper (1961).
§ As we discuss in Chapter 7, Kolmogorov and others subsequently modified this hypothesis to allow for the
effects of dissipation intermittency.
1.6 Key properties of turbulence 17

for these are the only combinations of and ν that produce a length scale and
a velocity scale. The Reynolds number of the dissipative eddies is therefore
∼ υη/ν = 1, which confirms that they are strongly influenced by viscosity.
Using ∼ u3 / we can write, using Eq. (1.34)
 3/4
  1/4 u3/4 u 3/4
= 3/4 ∼ 1/4 3/4 = = Rt ,
η ν  ν ν
(1.35)
u u u 1/4
= 1/4
∼ 3 = Rt .
υ ( ν) (u ν/)1/4

Equation (1.35) implies that in large-Rt turbulent flows the dissipative eddies are
quite weak and quite small compared to the energy-containing eddies. If, for exam-
ple, u ∼ 1 m s−1 and  ∼ 103 m, as is typical in the atmospheric boundary layer,
then Rt ∼ 108 so that υ ∼ 10−2 m s−1 and η ∼ 10−3 m.
The ratio of vorticities typical of the dissipative and energy-containing eddies is

vorticity of dissipative eddies υ/η υ  1/2


∼ = ∼ Rt ; (1.36)
vorticity of energy-containing eddies u/ u η

at large Rt the dissipative eddies contain essentially all the turbulent vorticity.
The smallness of η/ in large-Rt turbulence puts severe limits on the Rt that can
be reached in direct numerical simulations of turbulence (Problem 1.9). Although
few turbulent flows of practical importance have Rt values small enough to be
calculated in this way, the concept of “Reynolds number similarity” (Chapter 2)
does make them useful.
The Kolmogorov microscale η, which from Eq. (1.35) can be written as
ν 3/4 1/4
η∼ , (1.37)
u3/4
is seldom smaller than 10−4 m in engineering flows and about 10−3 m in the atmo-
sphere. This is almost always large enough to ensure the applicability of continuum
fluid mechanics.

1.6.5 Mathematical intractability


Generally speaking only linear differential equations can be directly and straight-
forwardly solved by analytical means. The advective acceleration term in the
Navier–Stokes equation (1.26) involves a product of velocity and velocity gra-
dient, making the equation nonlinear and mathematically intractable. This has a
simple physical intepretation. This nonlinear term produces the vortex stretching
term in Eq. (1.28); vortex stretching is believed to be a principal mechanism in the
18 Introduction

cascade of kinetic energy from large scales to small (Chapters 6, 7). This cascade
dynamically “couples” all the eddies in a turbulent flow. Equation (1.35) shows
that the ratio of energy-containing and dissipative eddy sizes increases as the 3/4
power of the large-eddy Reynolds number Rt , so a turbulent flow of large Rt has
a huge number of interacting eddies. This has thwarted all attempts to solve the
turbulence equations analytically. Even at relatively small Rt the “bookkeeping”
for these interactions overwhelms even our largest computers.

1.7 Numerical modeling of turbulent flows


Today’s numerical calculations of large-Rt turbulent flows (our daily weather fore-
casts, for example) do not use the basic fluid equations. Instead they use approximate
forms of the averaged equations first derived by Osborne Reynolds (1895). Reynolds
averaged over a region of space surrounding a point; the average over an ensemble
of realizations of the flow was introduced later. For now we shall not be specific
about the type of averaging; it can be time, space, or ensemble averaging. If the
average commutes with differentiation (as we shall see, most averages do) we can
write the averaged form of the Navier–Stokes equation (1.26) as

∂ui ∂ui uj 1 ∂p
+ =− , (1.38)
∂t ∂xj ρ ∂xi

with the overbar denoting the average. We have assumed the averaged viscous term
is negligible (Problem 1.8). In writing (1.38) we have used the zero-divergence
property of uj to bring it into the derivative. But the averaging has created a ui uj
term in (1.38); in turbulent flow it differs from ui uj (Problem 1.17) and, hence, is
an unknown. If we write ui uj as

τij
ui uj = ui uj + ui uj − ui uj = ui uj − , (1.39)
ρ

the averaged equation (1.38) becomes

∂ui ∂ui uj 1 ∂p 1 ∂τij


+ =− + . (1.40)
∂t ∂xj ρ ∂xi ρ ∂xj

Averaging the Navier–Stokes equation has produced Eq. (1.40) for the average
velocity field, but the equation contains a new term involving a turbulent stress τij .
We’ll see that this is a subtly different quantity for ensemble and space averages,
but in each case it is typically called the Reynolds stress. Experience has shown that
in turbulent flow it is always important.
1.7 Numerical modeling of turbulent flows 19

In the same way, averaging Eq. (1.29) for a conserved scalar and neglecting its
averaged molecular term produces

∂c ∂c ui ∂fi
+ =− , (1.41)
∂t ∂xi ∂xi

where fi = cui − c ui is the turbulent flux of the scalar.


In Chapter 4 we’ll derive conservation equations for these turbulent fluxes. They
involve further unknowns, and so in practice the turbulent fluxes (or their conserva-
tion equations) are modeled – approximated in some way. The two broad categories
of turbulent flow models correspond to the type of averaging that produced them.
Although the type of averaging used is often not indicated explicitly, you can often
infer it from careful reading of the model description.
In ensemble averaging the velocity and scalar fields are broken into ensemble-
mean and fluctuating (turbulent) parts, and the flux produced is due to all the
turbulence. In space averaging the filter separates the fields into resolvable and
unresolvable (also called subgrid-scale or subfilter-scale) parts. Here the flux is due
to the unresolvable turbulence.

1.7.1 Ensemble-averaged turbulence models


The earliest approximation for turbulent fluxes was a gradient-diffusion model like
that used for the molecular fluxes, but with a much larger, “eddy” diffusivity. The
“mixing-length” model used by Prandtl and Taylor is the simplest example, but it
is now seldom used in computations. We discuss it briefly in Chapter 4 to motivate
your physical understanding of turbulent fluxes.
A more recent approach, which we discuss in Chapter 5, is to compute the
turbulent fluxes through models of their evolution equations. This second-order-
closure modeling, as it is often called, has been computationally feasible since the
late 1960s.
“Pdf modeling” is a type of ensemble-average modeling. While the technique for
deriving evolution equations for turbulent fluxes has been known for many decades,
that for deriving the evolution equation for the probability density function, or pdf,
of a turbulent flow variable is much newer, being presented first by Lundgren (1967).
We shall discuss the pdf and its evolution equation in Part III.

1.7.2 Space-averaged turbulence models


The space averaging introduced by Reynolds in 1895 has been generalized recently
to spatial filtering of the governing fluid equations. Averaging implies a uniform
20 Introduction

weighting of all contributions; in filtering the weighting function can vary with
position. The concept is to apply to the governing equations a spatial filter that
removes the smallest eddies and leaves the energy-containing ones unaffected,
producing equations for the larger-scale part of each variable. If L is the spa-
tial scale of the computational domain and f is the cutoff scale of the filter –
that is, the filter removes spatial variations of scale less than f – then of order
N = L/ f computational grid points are required in each direction to resolve the
filtered fields, of order N 3 grid points in all. For this reason the filtered variables are
often called resolvable-scale variables. Today N is typically in the range 30–300.
This modeling approach now goes by the apt name large-eddy simulation, or LES.
It was proposed by Lilly (1967) and first used successfully by Deardorff for turbu-
lent channel flow (Deardorff, 1970a) and then for the atmospheric boundary layer
(Deardorff, 1970b).

1.8 Physical modeling of turbulent flows


In a review paper on turbulence written at the dawning of the computer age, Corrsin
(1961) estimated the number of grid points required in a numerical calculation of a
modest Reynolds number (Rt  104 ) turbulent flow.† Upon presenting his result,
4 × 1014 grid points (which is still well out of reach today) he wrote:
The foregoing estimate is enough to suggest the use of analog rather than digital
computation; in particular, how about an analog consisting of a tank of water?
Corrsin’s suggestion of “an analog consisting of a tank of water” is now called
physical modeling or fluid modeling. It allows the structure of both convective and
“mechanical” turbulence to be observed in scaled-down, laboratory flows. Some
of its most successful applications have been to turbulent dispersion of effluents.
Early studies in a 1-m scale convection tank revealed for the first time some of
the unusual dispersion properties of convective turbulence (Deardorff and Willis,
1975). Another successful application is the turbulent dispersion of effluents from
sources in complex terrain (Snyder, 1985).

1.9 The impact of Kolmogorov


Of the many scientists who have worked in turbulence, none stands taller than
Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov. In a brief paper published in 1941 he laid out the
basis for our present-day understanding of turbulence as a dynamical system.‡
† To put this example in more physical terms, the Reynolds number ud/ν of turbulent flow in a stirred (at u =
10−1 m s−1 ) cup (of diameter d = 10−1 m) of tea (ν = 10−6 m2 s−1 ) is 104 . That flow, which has an Rt value
somewhat smaller than 104 because  < d, probably can be computed through DNS today.
‡ The Frisch (1995) monograph on turbulence is subtitled “The Legacy of A. N. Kolmogorov.”
1.9 The impact of Kolmogorov 21

Earlier work (as summarized by Taylor (1935), for example) had shown that
a turbulent flow has large eddies that interact with the mean flow, contain most
of the kinetic energy of the turbulence, and lie at one end of a wide range of
eddies that interact nonlinearly through mechanisms such as vortex stretching. It
was understood that in equilibrium the rate of working of the fluid against the
viscous stresses in the smallest of these eddies dissipates kinetic energy at the same
mean rate it is extracted from the mean flow by the large eddies. But Taylor (1935)
misidentified the spatial scale of this dissipative microturbulence, as he called it.
He chose the scale (Chapter 7)
 1/2
νu2
λ= , (1.42)

but as we discussed in Section 1.6.4, Kolmogorov argued (and we now accept) that
the dissipative-eddy scale is η = (ν 3 / )1/4 . They are related by
λ 1/4
∼ Rt (1.43)
η
(Problem 1.19), so that λ can be considerably larger. We now call λ the Taylor
microscale.
According to Batchelor (1996), Taylor’s “The spectrum of turbulence” (1938)
was his “last paper on turbulence before the needs of World War II took him away
from academic research.” In this paper Taylor connected the power spectral density,
or spectrum, to the two-point correlation function in physical space through the
Fourier transform (Part III) and, in a casual aside, introduced what is now known
as “Taylor’s hypothesis” for interpreting a time series at a spatial point as a spatial
record in the upstream direction.
But until Kolmogorov (1941) there was no unifying view of turbulence dynamics
across the entire scale range. He postulated that for scales beyond the energy-
containing range there are but two governing parameters: the mean rate of transfer of
kinetic energy per unit mass from larger eddies to smaller (the energy cascade rate,
Part III) and the fluid kinematic viscosity. Therefore (as we showed in Section 1.6.4)
this extensive scale range yields readily to dimensional analysis. The dimensional
analysis is even simpler in what we now call the inertial subrange, the larger-
scale end of this range. Here the local Reynolds number is large so the viscosity
is not important, and so the turbulence spectrum – the mean-squared amplitude
of velocity fluctuation as a function of spatial wavenumber (inverse scale) – is
then determined solely by the energy cascade rate. Its analytical form, the famous
Kolmogorov spectrum (Chapter 7), emerges directly from dimensional analysis.
In large-Rt turbulence this inertial subrange can be extensive; in the atmospheric
boundary layer it can span four decades.
22 Introduction

1.9.1 The conceptual model


Kolmogorov’s seminal work enables us to view turbulence as a nonlinear system
of interacting eddies that dynamically determines some of its properties and takes
others from its fluid-mechanical environment.
The velocity scale u and the spatial scale  of the energy-containing turbulent
eddies are of the order of, but typically smaller than, the velocity and length scales
of the mean flow. The turbulence Reynolds number Rt = u/ν being large, these
energy-containing eddies are essentially inviscid. They determine the viscous dissi-
pation rate, the rate of conversion of turbulence kinetic energy into internal energy;
it is independent of the value of the viscosity (and, as Holmes et al. (1996) suggest,
even independent of the mechanism of the dissipation).
Since the rates of production and dissipation of turbulence kinetic energy per
unit mass (TKE) depend only on u and , on dimensional grounds they are of order
u3 /. But the dissipation process itself is a viscous one, so the velocity and length
scales of the eddies in which it occurs do depend on ν. By Kolmogorov’s 1941
hypotheses the velocity scale υ and the length scale η of the dissipative motion are
η = η( , ν) ∼ (ν 3 / )1/4 , υ = υ( , ν) ∼ (ν )1/4 .
Turbulence obtains its kinetic energy by direct transfer from the mean flow;
in equilibrium it loses kinetic energy at that rate through the viscous dissipa-
tion into internal energy occurring in its smallest eddies. The turbulence field
adjusts the size and intensity of those dissipative eddies in order to achieve the
required energy dissipation rate. This viscous dissipation rate is proportional to the
third power of flow speed, and the fluid heating it causes can be important in hur-
ricanes (Bister and Emanuel, 1998) and more generally in storms (Businger and
Businger, 2001).

Questions on key concepts


1.1 Explain the physical mechanism by which turbulence increases surface
fluxes. Can you give some insight into the environmental implications of
this?
1.2 Write out the components of the Navier–Stokes equation in turbulent flow.
1.3 What do we mean by a conserved scalar? Write out its equation in turbulent
flow. Can a conserved scalar mix? Explain.
1.4 What are vortex stretching and vortex tilting? Why are they so important in
turbulence?
1.5 What do we mean by the “velocity and length scales” u and  of a turbulent
flow? To which set of eddies do they refer? Why do the dissipative eddies
have their own scales? How are the two sets of scales related?
Problems 23

1.6 What old saying about snowflakes applies also to turbulent flows?
Explain.
1.7 Explain why most practically important turbulent flows cannot be calculated
numerically through their governing equations.
1.8 Explain how the Reynolds stress emerges when the equation of motion for
turbulent flow is averaged. Interpret the Reynolds stress physically.
1.9 What is a turbulence model? Why are they necessary? What are the two
broad types, and how do they differ?
1.10 Why do you think only the lowest part of the atmosphere is continuously
turbulent?
1.11 Explain the statement “turbulence is an unsolved problem.”
1.12 We say turbulence is random and stochastic. What do those terms mean?
1.13 Explain how the rate of viscous dissipation can be independent of the fluid
viscosity when that viscosity appears in its definition.
1.14 Explain why the density of a mass-conserving constituent in a turbulent flow
need not be a conserved variable.
1.15 Discuss what properties of the ordinary derivative are shared by the
substantial derivative. What property is not shared?

Problems
1.1 Consider steady, fully developed laminar flow in a circular pipe of diameter
D. The axial equation of motion is

1 ∂p(x) ν ∂ ∂u(r)
0=− + r .
ρ ∂x r ∂r ∂r

(a) Why does p not depend on r? u not depend on x? ∂p/∂x not depend
on x?
(b) Solve this differential equation for u(r).
(c) Find expressions for uave , Eq. (1.2), and the Darcy friction factor f ,
Eq. (1.5).
(d) Express the required pumping power per unit mass of fluid in terms of f .
1.2 Generalize Problem 1.1 to include conduction heat transfer in the radial
direction. The temperature equation is

∂T (x, r) α ∂ ∂T (x, r)
u(r) = r .
∂x r ∂r ∂r

Here α = k/(ρcp ) is the thermal diffusivity. Consider the case when ∂T /∂x
does not depend on x.
24 Introduction

(a) By differentiating this temperature equation with respect to x show that


∂T /∂x does not depend on r. Then derive the solution (1.11) that we
wrote for this equation.
(b) Show that the wall heat flux H satisfies
Duave ρcp ∂T
H =− .
4 ∂x
1.3 Define a time average for use in Eq. (1.9). Show that it commutes with
differentiation.
1.4 Dot the Navier–Stokes equation (1.26) with velocity to form a kinetic
energy equation. Where possible write terms as divergences. Integrate the
equation over the entire volume of a turbulent flow, assuming the velocity
vanishes on the bounding surface, and thereby eliminate them. Show that the
volume-integrated kinetic energy must decay with time. Identify the decay
mechanism.
1.5 Suppose in Problem 1.4 we applied a body-force field to the fluid. When can
the volume-integrated balance of kinetic energy now be steady in time? Inter-
pret the steady energy balance in terms of the first law of thermodynamics.
What can you conclude about the role of viscous dissipation in turbulence?
1.6 It has been found that the viscous dissipation rate of kinetic energy per unit
mass is of order u3 /. Using the expression for viscous dissipation found
in Problem 1.4, show that the velocity and length scales of the dissipative
eddies cannot be u and .
1.7 Write the rate of viscous dissipation per unit mass as the scalar product of
the viscous stress tensor and the strain-rate tensor.
1.8 Explain why the viscous term in the averaged Navier–Stokes equation (1.38)
is negligible. What restrictions must you place on the averaging scale for this
to be true in the case of spatial averaging?
1.9 How does the number of grid points needed to calculate a turbulent flow
directly from the governing equations depend on Rt ?
1.10 If a cumulus cloud is turbulent, why does it appear “frozen”?
1.11 Derive the equation for the evolution of the gradient of a conserved scalar.
Can its production term operate in two-dimensional turbulence?
1.12 Show that
Dab Db Da
=a +b .
Dt Dt Dt
Use this property to show that the dot product of the gradient of a conserved
scalar and vorticity is a conserved scalar.
1.13 Show that if c1 (x, t) and c2 (x, t) are solutions of Eq. (1.31), then c1 + c2 is
also a solution. How is this used in determining the dispersion of effluents in
the lower atmosphere? Why is it not valid for the Navier–Stokes equation?
References 25

1.14 Two geometrically identical turbulent flows, one using water and the other
air, have the same u and . By what factor do their total rates of dissipation
of kinetic energy differ?
1.15 If Sij and Aij are symmetric and antisymmetric tensors, respectively, show
that their contraction Sij Aij vanishes.
1.16 Resolve the paradox that is independent of ν but the expression for it
(Problem 1.4) involves ν.
1.17 Explain why, in connection with Eq. (1.40), ui uj is different from ui uj in a
turbulent flow.
1.18 Derive the vorticity equation (1.28) from the Navier–Stokes equation (1.26).
Hint: use the vector identities ω × u = (u · ∇)u − ∇(u · u)/2 and (u · ∇)u =
ω × u + ∇(u · u)/2.
1.19 Derive Eq. (1.43) for the ratio of the Taylor and Kolmogorov microscales.
1.20 Do Problem 1.4 for steady flow in a pipe, integrating between two cross
sections. Interpret your result.
1.21 Show that the total time derivative need not commute with other derivatives.

References
Batchelor, G. K., 1950: The application of the similarity theory of turbulence to
atmospheric diffusion. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 76, 133–146.
Batchelor, G. K., 1967: An Introduction to Fluid Dynamics. Cambridge University Press.
Batchelor, G. K., 1996: The Life and Legacy of G. I. Taylor. Cambridge University Press.
Bister, M., and K. A. Emanuel, 1998: Dissipative heating and hurricane intensity. Meteor.
Atmos. Phys., 65, 233–240.
Businger, S., and J. A. Businger, 2001: Viscous dissipation of turbulence kinetic energy in
storms. J. Atmos. Sci., 58, 3793–3796.
Carusi, E., and A. Favaro, Eds., 1924: Leonardo da Vinci’s Del Moto e Misura dell’
Acqua. Bologna.
Corrsin, S., 1961: Turbulent flow. Am. Scientist, 49, 300–325.
Deardorff, J. W., 1970a: A numerical study of three-dimensional turbulent channel flow at
large Reynolds numbers. J. Fluid Mech., 41, 453–480.
Deardorff, J. W., 1970b: A three-dimensional numerical investigation of the idealized
planetary boundary layer. Geophys. Fluid Dyn., 1, 377–410.
Deardorff, J. W., and G. E. Willis, 1975: A parameterization of diffusion into the mixed
layer. J. Appl. Meteorol., 14, 1451–1458.
Dittus, F. W., and L. M. K. Boelter, 1930: Heat transfer in automobile radiators of the
tubular type. Univ. Calif., Berkeley, Publ. Eng., 2, 443–461.
Friedlander, S. K., and L. Topper, Eds., 1961: Turbulence: Classical Papers on Statistical
Theory. New York: Interscience.
Frisch, U., 1995: Turbulence: The Legacy of A. N. Kolmogorov. Cambridge University
Press.
Gleick, J., 1987: Chaos. New York: Viking Penguin.
Holmes, P., J. L. Lumley, and G. Berkooz, 1996: Turbulence, Coherent Structures,
Dynamical Systems and Symmetry. Cambridge University Press.
26 Introduction

Kolmogorov, A. N., 1941: The local structure of turbulence in incompressible viscous


fluid for very large Reynolds numbers. Doklady ANSSSR, 30, 301–305.
Kundu, P. K., 1990: Fluid Mechanics. San Diego: Academic Press.
Lilly, D. K., 1967: The representation of small-scale turbulence in numerical simulation
experiments. Proceedings of the IBM Scientific Computing Symposium on
Environmental Sciences, IBM Form no. 320-1951, pp. 195–210.
Lorenz, E., 1963: Deterministic nonperiodic flow. J. Atmos. Sci., 20, 130–141.
Lumley, J. L., and H. A. Panofsky, 1964: The Structure of Atmospheric Turbulence.
New York: Interscience.
Lumley, J. L., and A. M. Yaglom, 2001: A century of turbulence. Flow, Turbulence, and
Combustion, 66, 241–286.
Lundgren, T. S., 1967: Distribution functions in the statistical theory of turbulence. Phys.
Fluids, 10, 969–975.
Moody, L. F., 1944: Friction factors for pipe flow. Trans. ASME, 66, 671–684.
Nikuradse, J., 1933: Strömungsgesetze in rauhen Röhren. VDI-Forschungsheft, 361, 1933.
English translation: Laws of Flow in Rough Pipes. NACA Technical Memorandum
1292, 1950.
Orszag, S. A., and G. S. Patterson Jr., 1972: Numerical simulation of three-dimensional
homogeneous isotropic turbulence. Phys. Rev. Lett., 28, 76–79.
Reynolds, O., 1895: On the dynamical theory of incompressible viscous fluids and the
determination of the criterion. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 186, 123–164.
Rouse, H., and S. Ince, 1957: History of Hydraulics. Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers,
Inc., p. 47.
Snyder, W. H., 1985: Fluid modeling of pollutant transport and diffusion in stably
stratified flows over complex terrain. Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech., 17, 239–266.
Taylor, G. I., 1935: Statistical theory of turbulence. Proc. R. Soc., A151, 421–478.
Taylor, G. I., 1938: The spectrum of turbulence. Proc. R. Soc., A164, 476–490.
Tennekes, H., and J. L. Lumley, 1972: A First Course in Turbulence. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Turns, S. R., 2006: Thermal-Fluid Sciences: An Integrated Approach. Cambridge
University Press.
Van Dyke, M., 1982: An Album of Fluid Motion. Stanford: Parabolic Press.
2
Getting to know turbulence

2.1 Average and instantaneous properties contrasted


Figure 2.1 is a famous snapshot of a turbulent wake, the region downstream of a
body in a moving fluid. The instantaneously thin, irregular boundary between the
turbulent and nonturbulent flow is continuously deformed by the turbulent eddies,
so that under averaging it becomes a broad, smooth transition region. Figure 2.2
illustrates this same feature at the top of the atmospheric boundary layer.
We have had access to instantaneous turbulence fields through remote sensing
and numerical simulation only since the 1970s. Perhaps that is why our descriptive
terms for turbulence tend to refer to its statistical properties, not its instantaneous
ones. For example,

• Homogeneous turbulence has spatially uniform statistical properties (with the excep-
tion of mean pressure). A turbulent flow can be homogeneous in zero, one, two, or
three directions. A sphere wake is an example of the first. The turbulent boundary
layer near the leading edge of a flat plate, or downstream of a change in surface con-
ditions, can be homogeneous in one direction (the lateral) but is inhomogeneous in
the wall-normal and streamwise directions. The turbulent boundary layer over a uni-
form surface can be homogeneous in two directions, those in the plane parallel to
the surface, but is necessarily inhomogeneous in the normal direction. The grid tur-
bulence produced by a grating of bars spanning the cross section of a wind tunnel is
homogeneous in the cross-stream plane but inhomogeneous in the streamwise direction
because it decays as it goes downstream (Chapter 5). A carefully tailored homogeneous
shear flow in a wind tunnel (Tavoularis and Corrsin, 1981) is, to a good approximation,
homogeneous in all three directions.
• Steady (also called stationary) turbulence – turbulence in a laboratory flow
driven by a constant-speed blower, for example – has statistics that are independent of
time. Turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer can be steady for up to a few hours,
but near sunrise and sunset in clear weather it is made unsteady (nonstationary) by the
changing surface energy budget (Chapter 9).

27
28 Getting to know turbulence

Figure 2.1 The turbulent wake of a bullet, which is several hundred wake diame-
ters to the left. This shadowgraph shows the strikingly sharp, irregular boundary
between the turbulent fluid and the almost motionless fluid outside. Photograph
courtesy Army Research Laboratory. From Van Dyke (1982).

• Isotropic turbulence has statistical properties that are independent of translation, rotation,
and reflection of the coordinate axes. It must decay in time, for the production mechanisms
that maintain stationary turbulence are anisotropic (Chapter 6). Isotropy of the smallest
spatial scales is called local isotropy (Chapter 14).
• The logarithmic profile (or law of the wall) and the constant-stress layer refer to the height
variation of mean velocity and the Reynolds shear stress, respectively, in the turbulent
boundary layer over a flat surface. Like the Reynolds stresses themselves (which G. I.
Taylor (1935) called “virtual mean stresses”) they exist only as averages.
• The Gaussian plume refers to a mean effluent plume in homogeneous turbulent flow, not
an instantaneous plume.
• A well-mixed state of a convective atmospheric boundary layer (Chapter 11) has mean,
not instantaneous, profiles of potential temperature and water-vapor mixing ratio that are
essentially uniform with height.
• A turbulent flux of a property is the mean, not instantaneous, amount of that property
flowing through unit area per unit time due to the turbulent velocity.

2.2 Averaging
All the dependent variables in a turbulent flow – velocity, vorticity, temperature (if
there is heat transfer), density of an advected constituent (if there is mass transfer),
pressure – are turbulent. At any instant they are distributed irregularly in space, at
any point in space they fluctuate chaotically in time, and at given point and a given
time they vary randomly from realization to realization. Since Osborne Reynolds’
2.2 Averaging 29

Figure 2.2 Upper: Profiles of temperature and ozone mixing ratio at the top of a
cloud-capped convective boundary layer. z is measured from the mean top. From
Lenschow et al. (1988). Lower: Airborne-lidar measurements of aerosol concen-
tration in a vertical plane of a clear convective boundary layer. The instantaneous
top is quite thin and variable in space. Courtesy C. Kiemle, DLR Germany, and
J. Grabon, Penn State.

time it has been traditional to separate a turbulent flow variable a(x, t) into mean
and fluctuating parts distinguished by the overbar and prime:

a(x, t) = a(x, t) + a (x, t). (2.1)

The prime can make this notation cumbersome, so we shall use instead the notation
of Tennekes and Lumley (1972), denoting the “full” turbulent flow variable with
30 Getting to know turbulence

a tilde, ã(x, t), and representing its mean and fluctuating parts with upper- and
lower-case symbols:
ã(x, t) = A(x, t) + a(x, t). (2.2)

Several types of averages have been used to define mean values in turbulence.
Reynolds (1895) used a volume average. Somewhat later (in the 1930s, accord-
ing to Monin and Yaglom (1971)), Kolmogorov and his school, and Kampé de
Fériet, brought the ensemble average of statistical physics to turbulence; it is
conceptually the most elegant. Tennekes and Lumley (1972) used a time aver-
age in steady conditions. A time average is almost always used with quasi-steady
observations, and space averages in homogeneous directions are convenient with
numerical-simulation results.

2.2.1 The ensemble average


Turning on the blower that drives a laboratory turbulent flow generates a realization
of that flow. A flow property ã(x, t), where t is time measured from the instant the
blower is turned on, say, is random – i.e., different in every realization. We indicate
this randomness by writing the flow property as ã(x, t; α), α denoting the realization
number.
The ensemble average (also called the expected value) of ã is defined as the limit
of the average of a large number of samples of ã:

N
1
ã(x, t) ≡ A(x, t) ≡ lim ã(x, t; α). (2.3)
N →∞ N
α=1

As indicated in Eq. (2.3), the ensemble average can depend on both position and
time. Being linear, it commutes with other linear operations such as differentiation
and integration,

 b  b
∂ ã(x, t; α) ∂
= ã(x, t), ã(x, t; α) dt = ã(x, t) dt, (2.4)
∂t ∂t a a

and so forth (Problem 2.6).


In the literature the ensemble parameter is often not explicitly indicated, any
unaveraged quantity being taken as an arbitrary member of the ensemble. In
later chapters we shall follow this convention, suppressing the ensemble index.
Unless stated otherwise, by average or mean we generally intend the ensemble
average.
2.2 Averaging 31

Figure 2.3 Realizations of effluent plumes contrasted with the ensemble-averaged


plume.

2.2.2 Does the ensemble-averaged field exist?


An instantaneous effluent plume from a point source (Figure 2.3) is sinuous and
irregular. Measurements show that near the source the effluent concentration is
roughly uniform within it and zero outside it. But the ensemble-averaged plume is
diffuse and smooth; in homogeneous, wind-tunnel turbulence its mean concentra-
tion profile is found to be Gaussian. This suggests that the ensemble-averaged field
is unlikely to exist in any realization of a turbulent flow, even for an instant.

2.2.3 The ensemble-averaging rules


The ensemble average (we shall use average and mean interchangeably) has
convenient properties that are commonly called the Reynolds averaging rules:†

• The average of a sum is the sum of the averages (the distributive property):

ã + b̃ = ã + b̃. (2.5)
† Reynolds (1895) used a volume average but assumed it follows the rules for the ensemble average, so in the
turbulence community they now bear his name. We’ll discuss the volume averaging rules in Chapter 3.
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coquetailles et à la verve de Luc qui tenait l’excellent sujet de
l’Anglaise. Le rire eut vite détendu Molly, ce qui encouragea Gille à
lui jeter quelques regards sournois d’enfant prodigue. Elle y
répondait comme quelqu’un qui est décidé à tuer le veau gras le soir
même, ce qui ne laissa pas d’effrayer le jeune coureur. Mais il était
fort animé et suivant son penchant il ne put résister à l’envie de
ressaisir ce qu’il avait lâché. Pourtant après ce repas il revint à
Finette.

— On a parlé beaucoup de vous, tantôt, dit Finette flatteuse.


— Ah oui ! Elle est gentille, votre amie.
— Laquelle ? Vous lui plaisez énormément. Mes compliments,
c’est une belle fille.
— Vous trouvez ? Elle n’a pas de beaux yeux.
— Elle a une belle peau.
— Oui, mais ses dents sont drôlement plantées.
— Jeune goujat… Pourtant vous aimez les femmes.
— Je les adore…
— En tout cas, vous leur plaisez.
— Pas aux meilleures.
— Elles se valent toutes. Il n’y a pas une femme pour en céder
aux autres quand il s’agit d’aimer. Enfin je parle de celles qui aiment
cela.
— Vous aimez cela ?
Finette se mit à parler de romans et de comédies. Elle n’était pas
très difficile, approuvait plus de choses que Gille, mais avec
indifférence. Elle s’animait quand elle relevait dans un tempérament
une vivacité de désir et surtout de l’acharnement à se satisfaire. Puis
tout d’un coup :
— Je n’aime que Candide.
— Son jardin était bien petit, protesta Gille.
Étonné de la sûreté des opinions de Finette il les admira, puis il
les craignit car elles allaient vers un point de ralliement bien éloigné
de lui.
Aussitôt qu’il eut fait cette première réserve sur elle, il put noter
encore que si elle avait un teint exquis, son nez ne se prêtait guère à
une louange raisonnable. Mais pouvant séparer ses défauts de ses
qualités, il discerna mieux celles-ci. Mains courtes, doigts longs : ils
n’étaient pas fuselés, mais un peu carrés, avec des ongles courts.
Peau douce sur chair maigre. Ces mains étaient les instruments d’un
esprit actif et volontaire. Ce corps menu, potelé, pliant, se
familiarisait sournoisement sous les regards. Les fesses étaient trop
basses et les chevilles inachevées. Le visage était ridé par le désir
et la réflexion. Les yeux à force d’aiguiser leur regard s’étaient
rapetissés.
Il l’imaginait au lit, aimant le plaisir dans une parfaite décision de
ses nerfs, bientôt brisés. Sa tendresse ne donnait que le meilleur
d’elle-même, que ses traits les plus affinés et les plus efficaces. Elle
était tenue en main par la sagacité. Mais son esprit ? Il pourrait en
trouver le secret sans le dominer car elle avait transformé dans le
soin de son indépendance, sa pudeur refoulée et ses craintes de
femme seule. Cette constatation le butait et, timide devant l’obstacle,
il réprimait prudemment la curiosité qu’excitait ce corps dont les
ressorts lui semblaient dissimulés et difficiles.
Cependant elle voyait en lui un jouisseur qui se doublait d’un
lunatique, mais le lunatique servait encore le jouisseur. Il fallait
s’amuser de loin d’un tel personnage, ce qui lui convenait
parfaitement puisqu’elle ne voulait former aucun nœud après ceux,
douloureux, savants et forts qu’elle avait longtemps maintenus avec
son mari. C’était un curieux assemblage : il était naïf et spécieux,
flagorneur et implacable, tendrement zélé et tout à coup il
disparaissait, on retrouvait plus tard un déserteur un peu
nostalgique. Finette goûtait de ne pouvoir mettre aucune confiance
en lui. Le garçon se modelait selon une maxime à laquelle elle
revenait souvent : « rien à espérer, tout à prendre. »
Ils bavardèrent tard.
Gille se déshabilla hâtivement, pressé par le sommeil. Il ne
réfléchissait guère. Si c’était pour la solitude qu’il penchait d’abord,
l’apparition des êtres le séduisait toujours et le jetait hors de lui-
même. Il se lançait dans le torrent, et il ne pouvait avoir un regard
sur ses actions que quand, raccroché à la rive et ayant dormi, il se
retournait paresseusement sur les brisants où il avait culbuté. Se
mêlaient les images fatiguées de Françoise, de Molly, de Finette, de
Lady Hyacinthia. Il préférait l’une après l’autre, ne se satisfaisait ni
de celle-ci ni de celle-là, mais n’en repoussait aucune. Il se rappelait
seulement avec une vanité vague, comme si ses sens ne
nourrissaient pas sa mémoire, le corps heureux de Molly, Françoise
et la bonne senteur de son petit bois, l’ironie complaisante de
Finette, la carrière illustre de Lady Hyacinthia, la présence
inquiétante de Luc. Mais soudain, Madame de B… rassembla ses
traits dispersés.
Il s’en fit une image nette, d’un arbitraire désinvolte. Elle avait le
corps de cette putain de Vienne — cette putain, oh ! les putains —
qui était assise sur son imagination de tout son poids : un corps
immense, dont il sentait exactement l’épaisseur comme s’il la tenait.
Mais toute cette masse était enveloppée d’une ligne délicate, car le
visage était d’une autre, celui de cette femme dans le train de Milan,
dont les traits filant des yeux, des ailes du nez, de la bouche, faisait
un contre-courant fluide qui redescendait, comme un filet lumineux
enlève une masse plantureuse de poisson, sur tout le corps de
l’autre et, amenuisant d’une caresse scintillante les volumes
majestueux, les transfigurait.
Pourtant il avait envie aussi de vivre comme Françoise et avec
elle, il ne voulait pas songer encore que son corps qui ne lui avait
guère plu mais qui lui avait été voilé par la viridité du bois, lui
apparaîtrait bientôt sous son vrai jour.
Mais au bout de ces réflexions il s’inclina devant la loi de
voisinage qui représentait ce mur où il s’appuyait en retirant ses
souliers. Il n’était guère nécessaire de faire ce petit effort ingrat de
repousser cette belle poitrine grasse qui florissait à quelques pas
dans l’eau odorante qu’il entendait clapoter.
— La garce. Elle va m’attendre. J’ai une envie de roupiller.
Le rut bien réglé de cet après-midi, le laissait favorable à de
prochaines occasions. Pas ce soir, néanmoins. Pour indiquer son
bon plaisir dans la nuit qui baignait fraîchement la façade, il éteignit,
mais comme il venait de tourner le bouton, on toqua à la porte.
La flatterie l’emporta et sans rallumer, il défit le verrou. Sentant
bon, enveloppée d’un nouveau peignoir, Molly se glissa sans
vergogne dans son lit. Gille retira son pyjama qu’il avait enfilé avec
tant de fatigue.
— Tu m’as bien laissé tomber…
—…
— Oh ! n’aie pas peur, je ne te reproche rien. Nous ne nous
sommes pas fait de serments. Mais tu aurais pu avoir envie de faire
ça sur l’herbe avec moi.
Il restait inerte, mais Molly mit son point d’honneur à lui faire
oublier les ébats de la journée qu’elle devinait facilement. Il regarda,
distrait et amusé, son gros derrière au clair de lune tandis qu’elle
appelait chez lui un plaisir qu’il voulut bien lui faire partager, au
moment opportun, mais qui le soulevait vers madame de B…
III

Hyacinthia, d’une bonne maison, avait épousé autrefois un


socialiste inconnu dont elle pensait faire un premier ministre. A peine
se remua-t-il assez pour devenir Lord X… comme sa femme était
déjà Lady Hyacinthia. Elle avait eu vite fait de renoncer au rôle de
manager auprès de ce champion manqué, et comme la chasse et le
voyage étaient trop anglais, elle s’était retournée vers l’amour qui,
pourtant, de nos jours, ne l’est pas moins : un poète, un jockey, la
nièce d’un cardinal l’avaient déçue tour à tour. Ces éclatantes
maladresses montraient son cœur d’or, qui était fait pour se dilater
comme une sphère dans la main d’un roi. Elle n’avait pas su
reconnaître, quand ils passaient sur les grands chemins, les maîtres
peu voyants de ce temps-ci. Impatientée, elle avait fait main-basse
sur les premiers venus. Le poète eut un succès un peu brusque, en
fut étourdi et glissa aussitôt dans de faibles mondanités. Le jockey
engraissa. Enfin elle avait cru qu’on pouvait encore essayer du
scandale, mais elle avait eu toutes les peines du monde pour se
faire fermer quelques portes et on lui en ouvrait d’autres, selon les
rites empressés du monde immense et bien classé des irréguliers.
Pour le moment, elle vivait en France, froissant des livres,
recevant n’importe qui, trompant sa faim on ne savait plus comment.
Encore jeune, sa beauté dure était faite pour soutenir âprement les
luttes inexpiables de la cinquantaine.
Toute la bande alla déjeuner le lendemain dans son château
Louis XIII, où elle ménageait cette trêve avec elle-même. Ce lieu
faisait une réussite inutile et implacable où aucun détail n’avait été
épargné, aucune erreur effleurée, où régnait sans un pli le confort le
plus intransigeant.
Gille s’épouvantait devant cet écrin aussi funèbre que ceux de la
rue de la Paix où allaient mourir les fameuses et vaines anecdotes
portées par cette dame sans emploi. Finette recherchait
discrètement dans les yeux de Hyacinthia la figure de ses amours.
Elle appréciait cette femme qui faisait litière de ses ridicules mais
qui, sans doute avertie par le temps, s’asseyait avec toute son
obstination inutile, pour le recevoir comme une momie royale. Pour
Molly et Françoise, il y avait là un jeune peintre très frais, Prune
irlandais.
Lady Hyacinthia les abreuva de coquetailles, connaissant les
habitudes de demi-ivrognerie que prend cette sorte de Français.
Gille, qui avait besoin de réagir contre un reste de fatigue, en but
plus que les autres. En sorte qu’il s’échauffa encore plus qu’il ne
faisait d’habitude devant des étrangers.
Le mélange de sa coquetterie personnelle, de sa tendance
astucieuse à plier devant tout inconnu pour le séduire, de sa
susceptibilité nationale le jetait dans un labyrinthe d’habiletés
aimables au devant des Anglais et des Américains qu’il mêlait un
peu. Il venait de renoncer à certains préjugés sur les Anglais. Il les
avait crus longtemps, sous le signe de la reine Victoria, fermés à
toute aisance et il les avait admirés pour cela à tout hasard. Mais
des séjours en Angleterre et tant de rencontres à Paris lui avaient
retiré ces idées de l’autre siècle et ayant oublié sa révérence d’hier, il
se laissait aller maintenant avec la plupart des insulaires qu’il
rencontrait, surtout avec les femmes, à un débraillé digne de
Fielding.
Pendant le déjeuner, il disserta donc de la façon la plus
entreprenante sur les amours qui pouvaient se nouer entre les
Anglais et les Françaises, les Français et les Anglaises et sur
d’autres combinaisons encore dont l’état des mœurs l’obligeait bien
à parler. Au moment où un mot cru était sur sa langue, il le retenait
pourtant un peu et ne le laissait passer qu’enveloppé de certaines
précautions oratoires, des appels à la liberté de pensée et à l’horreur
de toute censure, car nos voisins, friands d’immoralisme, en sont
encore à la saison des conquêtes timides et des découvertes
étonnées.
Les rapports entre indigènes et étrangers à cette table n’étaient
guère affectés par le nationalisme outré qui domine à certains
étages de la société. La communauté des plaisirs, des lieux de
plaisir, l’égoïsme universel et complice des riches, la profondeur
toujours mesurée de leurs réflexions et de leurs propos, tout est fait
pour niveler dans les salons des différences que des journalistes,
généralement issus des classes peu voyageuses, s’exténuent à
entretenir ailleurs. Lady Hyacinthia ne notait les dissemblances
européennes que si des avions bombardaient Londres, ou si sa
modiste parisienne salait ses factures. Le reste du temps, elle était
en France et en Italie comme chez elle, parfaitement absente.
Finette et Luc parlaient beaucoup moins que Gille, mais assez
pour contrecarrer les jugements téméraires que leur ami prodiguait.
Ils s’étaient entraînés l’un l’autre depuis longtemps à haïr toute
affirmation bien que personne plus qu’eux ne fût assuré dans ses
opinions ; seulement ils s’y prenaient toujours de la sorte qu’ils
semblassent plutôt nier une chose qu’en certifier une autre, ce qui
suffisait à les persuader de leur prudence.
Gille remarquait bien l’opposition du frère et de la sœur, mais il
ne leur faisait guère de concessions, vite retourné vers Lady
Hyacinthia. Il ne ressentait le besoin ni de la renommée ni de
l’argent mais il aimait la liberté. L’argent simule cette liberté aux yeux
des ignorants.
Il regardait Lady Hyacinthia avec des yeux brillants. Les bijoux,
une hygiène magistrale jetaient pour lui toutes sortes d’illusions sur
cette peau qui, sans connaître l’été ni l’automne, hésitait entre le
printemps et l’hiver. Il avait envie, entre le Caire et le Canada, de se
coucher dans ces maisons enveloppées d’une seule saison égale,
d’amollir cette main armée d’un ceste de diamant. Mais ce sillon
dans la joue ? Il s’en arrangerait, son désir étant bien accroché à des
accessoires de platine ; et elle avait de belles dents. Se traîner avec
une vieille ? Elle n’est pas vieille. Le ridicule qui s’attache aux vieilles
coureuses ? Elle cesse de courir. Ce jockey, pourtant ? Gille se sentit
dans la peau du jockey, tout d’un coup. Il lui sembla montrer à ses
amis les façons d’un maquereau. Mais aux yeux de Hyacinthia il
était déjà l’amant nouveau, différent des anciens galants, qui la
relevait.
Tout cela, c’était d’imperceptibles intentions : il en transparaissait
beaucoup moins qu’il ne pensait dans ses gestes, grâce à la
prudence dont il les corrigeait bonnement.
Luc et Finette échangèrent leurs impressions en se promenant
dans les jardins après le déjeuner, tandis que leur camarade
marchait devant eux au côté de la maîtresse de maison, et que
Molly, sans grands efforts, se détournait de ses amours de la veille
et, parant à de nouvelles infidélités, entreprenait vigoureusement
Prune. Françoise avait disparu après le déjeuner, appelée par ses
affaires.
— Est-ce qu’il a recouché avec Molly ? demanda Luc à Finette.
— Je ne crois pas. Elle a plutôt l’air délaissée.
— Tu crois qu’il recouchera ?
— Il ne doit jamais avoir envie de recoucher avec une femme.
— Si on insiste !
— C’est bien possible. Je ne le comprends pas. Qu’est-ce qui
l’attire dans notre grosse tourte ? Il n’est pas difficile. C’est drôle, il
m’a dit qu’il n’aimait que les femmes bien faites et il couche avec la
première venue.
— Molly est encore bien faite.
— Peuh ! En tout cas, elle est idiote.
— Il ne lui parle pas. Il lui plaisait beaucoup. Elle était aux anges,
le premier jour. Il se laisse faire.
— C’est vrai, il a du succès.
— Le charme.
— Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire ?
— Il aime plaire. Ça le fait sortir un peu de lui-même. Les autres
restent enfoncés dans leur peau et quand ils croient se décarcasser,
ils n’arrivent qu’à faire ressortir leur égoïsme, tout de même, un peu
gros.
Finette s’animait un peu.
— C’est vrai, il joue très bien le monsieur qui adore les femmes ;
ça devient rare, ricana Luc.
— Mais je crois qu’il les aime vraiment.
— Il s’en fout. Il a la manie de jouer son petit jeu de coquetterie,
et c’est tout. Il n’a jamais eu de collage, à ce qu’on m’a dit. Quand il
en a une, il ne pense qu’à la plaquer. Tu ne peux pas dire qu’il soit
de ces hommes qui ont vraiment besoin du jupon. Du reste, c’est ce
qui est intéressant en lui, cette sauvagerie. Tu ne sais pas comment
il est entre hommes. Il parle des femmes d’une façon atroce. C’en
est gênant.
— Oh ! il est peut-être comme cela avec toi. Les hommes sont
toujours les mêmes, les uns devant les autres, ils ne veulent pas
avoir l’air.
— Non, c’est un type, dans le fond, qui ne tient à rien.
— Alors, il en souffre ?
— Mais non. Il a l’air triste, comme ça, de loin en loin, mais c’est
une tristesse très vague, dont il s’accommode, qui va avec un bon
petit égoïsme, bien organisé. Il est très content comme il est, au
fond.
Gille plaisait à Lady Hyacinthia qui entre temps s’était renseignée
et avait appris que ce garçon avait des talents cachés et assez
austères, qu’il conduisait de loin une assez grosse affaire où sa
famille lui avait laissé des intérêts dominants. De là à la politique il
pourrait ne faire qu’un saut !
Gille se serrait dans une coquetterie appliquée, s’efforçant de ne
pas perdre de vue à travers les traits particuliers, menacés de
couperose, que prenait aujourd’hui la Faveur, les chemins simples et
constants qui y conduisent.
Pourtant il partit sans arranger avec la dame aucune entrevue
précise et Lady Hyacinthia l’aperçut tout de suite très aimable, dans
la voiture qui quittait son perron, avec Molly dont le sourire, détourné
d’un Anglais, cessait tout d’un coup d’être plein d’une sensualité
secrète, pour s’épanouir du côté d’un Français dans un cynisme
sentimental.
IV

Finette ignorait la bonté. Une occasion d’être bonne la surprenait


— pourtant elle croyait vivre au delà de toute surprise — mais elle
pouvait être bonne après tout, si cela ne dérangeait pas son confort
— et alors on y trouvait beaucoup de grâce, car elle n’y attachait
aucun prix. Elle était cruelle de la même façon, sans le craindre,
mais sans en jouir. Tout se tient, lui avait-on appris, il faut écarter
pour toujours l’idée de disjoindre cet enchaînement et de réussir
quelquefois à plier la Nature à des exigences plus humaines. Son
indispensable égoïsme, professait-elle donc, avait pour contre-coup
inévitable une souffrance chez son prochain. Elle acceptait à
l’inverse, quand elle n’y pouvait plus rien, de pâtir de ces
mouvements durs par quoi les autres reportent l’intérêt sur eux-
mêmes. Mais tout en s’occupant de ses affaires et en servant sa
propre cause, ne peut-on pas plus souvent épargner à autrui la
souffrance ? Ce serait par sobriété, mais alors on se priverait de ce
qui nous découvre le plus piquant d’eux-mêmes ? Si Finette
répondait oui, c’est qu’elle était arrivée à la limite de la lassitude et
de l’indifférence. C’est ainsi qu’elle était de manières douces et
libérales.
Elle ne songeait pas longtemps à la mort, mais souvent, et
qu’elle bornait sa vie de toutes parts. Elle n’attendait rien que de
quelques jours et peu de choses : des sensations de loin en loin.
Parce qu’elle avait mis longtemps, dans un seul homme, la source
de la plupart de ces sensations, elle pensait bien n’avoir pas été
pour cela sentimentale.
Et si, croyant à l’infirmité et au ridicule de tous et qu’il est vain de
retoucher la Nature, elle s’était pourtant corrigée de plusieurs
défauts, ce n’était jamais que de défauts intellectuels et elle n’avait
voulu que polir l’instrument spectaculaire qui lui permettait de
savourer ses sensations, se rendre seulement plus intelligente.
La fatigue et l’esprit critique assuraient son désintéressement des
hommes ; Finette n’avait aucune idée d’exercer sur eux son pouvoir,
elle qui était pourtant capable de vive activité, son cynisme n’était
pas entreprenant. De plus, elle ne se jugeait pas belle, et si elle
n’ignorait pas le charme que tout le monde lui accordait, elle ne
l’estimait pas de la sorte qu’il pût mener les hommes, la plupart du
temps, plus loin que la familiarité.
Ainsi faite, elle imagina Gille d’une nature semblable. Elle aimait
que du moment qu’on lui résistait, il n’insistât pas et se reportât sur
un autre objet. Pourtant elle entrevoyait parfois qu’il ne voulait pas
seulement se frôler et se prêter aux passants mais les atteindre et
les pénétrer. Il avait des regards d’une inflexion si tendre qu’elle ne
pouvait douter sur le moment qu’ils ne fussent sentis de façon forte
par celui à qui ils semblaient échapper. Elle se méfiait alors qu’il ne
fût prêt à démasquer derrière son indifférence élégante quelque
doctrine fantastique sur les possibilités du cœur. Mais les regards de
Gille se renouvelaient dans la même heure sur deux ou trois femmes
de nature si diverse, qu’elle revenait à ne voir en lui qu’un goulu qui
ne s’attardait pas aux délicatesses et aux difficultés de la
gourmandise.
Ces raisons, qui n’étaient peut-être pas celles de son partenaire,
l’accordaient à lui pour cultiver les illusions que composait leur
rencontre. Ils ne connaissaient presque rien des circonstances de
leur passé, et, par un calcul simultané, ils arrêtaient sur les lèvres de
leurs amis les anecdotes qui auraient éclairé cette partie d’eux-
mêmes. Et comme de plus ils ne poussaient pas beaucoup leur
sentiment, ils ne découvraient pas vite leurs caractères et ils
mettaient dans cette lenteur un plaisir qui en remplaçait d’autres, par
exemple ceux de la pudeur.
Gille n’avait jamais trouvé suffisantes la plupart des femmes qu’il
avait rencontrées et au plus fort de l’agrément qu’elles lui donnaient
il n’oubliait jamais de se dire qu’il en existait d’invisibles qu’il n’avait
pas. Mais pour satisfaire son mol ascétisme de paresseux, il
comptait sur le temps, étirant nonchalamment sa jeunesse. Il n’avait
besoin pour le moment — ce moment, c’était pourtant toute cette
belle jeunesse — que d’incidents qui lui fissent éprouver
suffisamment la résistance et à la fois la soumission des choses.
Assuré de ces amorces qu’il avait çà et là dans quelques âmes, il
venait goûter auprès de Finette le sentiment délicieux qu’elle rendrait
inutile un effort de plus. Ou plutôt, même avec elle, il croyait
vaguement qu’il aurait pu aller plus loin, mais, pour préserver le droit
de se plaindre, il n’en faisait rien. Car il avait pris l’habitude de se
plaindre auprès d’elle, par des allusions légères et coquettes.
Finette accueillait ses plaintes avec empressement ; elle y
trouvait de quoi se renforcer contre Gille : comme elles sonnaient
faux à ses oreilles, elles la confirmaient dans l’idée qu’en se
dérobant à lui, elle évitait une séduction molle et dédaigneuse,
bientôt entièrement relâchée, qui pourtant — s’assurait-elle — ne lui
aurait causé aucune déception ni aucune révolte, puisqu’elle
n’attendait de la vie rien de plus mordant.
Gille, contrairement à ce que voyait Finette, n’était pas à l’aise, il
n’était pas près de se détendre avec elle. Pourtant elle lui offrait la
plus souple camaraderie. Mais il la croyait parfaitement armée
contre lui, grâce au souvenir de son mari, et capable de regarder de
sang-froid des avances prononcées où dès lors il ne s’imaginait que
ridicule.
Toutes ses indications se jouaient furtivement dans leurs yeux et
sur leurs ongles tandis qu’ils dînaient seuls, un soir où tout le reste
de la bande était ailleurs. La salle à manger était un lieu sobre ; la
lumière et le cristal célébraient des noces pudiques. Une bonne
cuisine achevait d’écarter toute trivialité.
Elle l’amusait d’une de ses amies dont les amants ne pouvaient
se débarrasser que par la fuite : sentiments langoureux, caresses
désordonnées, anxiété infinie. Finette constatait, avec un ennui
pénible, voisin de la commisération, que cette femme maladroite
souffrait. Elle dénonçait, avec une ironie qui ne désarmait pas, cette
souffrance comme une erreur. Gille scrutait ce double et égal
mouvement d’ironie et de pitié.
Ils laissèrent bientôt cette dame, et ils allèrent fumer dans un
petit pavillon très frais, auprès d’un bassin.
« L’embrasser ? Elle sait ! »
A cause de cette image qu’il avait voulu se faire d’une Finette
ironique, il avait déjà pris une attitude qui lui paraissait devoir, du
reste, obtenir grâce à ses yeux. Cette femme, qui n’était éclairée que
par la lune et que certains gestes enfonçaient entièrement dans
l’ombre jusqu’à la réduire au point de feu de sa cigarette, ne devait
entendre que des paroles narquoises. Il mit entre eux une véracité
un peu pointue.
— Croyez-vous qu’une Molly compte pour moi ? demanda-t-il.
— Est-ce que je sais ? Pourquoi pas, mon Dieu ?
— Je pouvais trouver mieux chez vous.
— C’est une autre question. Mais il y a tant de questions.
— Est-ce que nous coucherons ensemble ?
— On ne sait jamais ; mais cela ne nous avancera à rien.
— Pourquoi ? à cause de votre mari ?
— Je ne pourrai vous rendre que la monnaie de votre pièce.
— Qu’est-ce que vous croyez que je peux vous offrir, pas
beaucoup, hein ?
— Je ne sais pas ce que vous me donnerez. Mais je sais ce que
je pourrai vous rendre.
— Cela m’aurait bien plu de vous toucher, de vous…
— C’est autre chose.
— Mais c’est bien désagréable que vous me réduisiez d’avance à
la portion congrue.
— Portion congrue !
Elle eut un geste vif autour de son corps.
Elle avait vu Molly et Suzanne, ces jours derniers, Hyacinthia
aller vers lui amusées par les coquetteries précises, intriguées par
les réticences vagues du garçon et pourtant toutes animées d’un
espoir que faisait renaître sans cesse de tendres allusions
soudaines sur un visage assez fermé mais mobile. Elles revenaient
résignées, ayant appris des maximes amères d’une bouche
plaisante.
Prendrait-elle part à ce jeu curieux et dérobé ? Il n’y avait point
de risques au monde pour elle. Elle pouvait lui prêter son corps :
l’amour qu’elle avait eu pour son mari l’avait épuisé, laissé aride. Il
prendrait ce corps, sans demander davantage. Même s’il prononçait
des paroles équivoques, elle n’oublierait pas qu’il n’avait pas besoin
de plus. Elle ne se prendrait jamais à cette tendresse à éclipses.
Et puis, il fallait bien qu’elle occupât un jour au moins, cette place
que Gille petit à petit lui avait faite au milieu de ses amies, dont
chacune n’était évidemment pour lui qu’un prétexte à marquer
autour d’elle un tour plus étroit. Elle ne se sentait nullement
contrainte par ce resserrement, mais il lui plaisait d’être son
complice et d’entrer dans ce système de dédains et de flatteries
habiles.
Mais Gille ? Il n’ignorait pas cette opinion que, faute de mieux et
pour éviter les démarches grandiloquentes où s’empêtre la
recherche de ce mieux, on pourrait limiter désespérément le
commerce amoureux à un échange de caresses perdues et à une
camaraderie qui ne s’exercerait même que par périodes, quand on
en sentirait le besoin de réveiller son égoïsme par le contraste avec
un autre. Mais chaque fois qu’il se trouvait devant une femme, il était
aussitôt envahi par tous les rêves que les hommes ont pu accumuler
sur leurs ombres.
Que Finette pût séparer son corps du reste de son être, Gille
commençait de l’en mépriser. En même temps il la craignait parce
que par cette manœuvre elle pouvait lui faire sentir quelque chose
de douloureux. Enfin, il releva comme un défi ce tranquille partage
qu’elle faisait devant lui, jaloux de ce qu’elle lui dérobait.
Un peu plus tard, Finette s’écria que tous les êtres étaient
pareils. Lui qui traînait d’une femme à une autre en fut choqué. Il la
regarda de travers et la traita de paresseuse.
— On a plus vite fait en disant cela, s’écria-t-il. Cela vous
dispense de chercher et de trouver.
— Je ne me sens pas dispensée d’avoir un peu de sang-froid et
de regarder ce qui est.
— Et comment avez-vous pu aimer votre mari ? Vous le
distinguez pourtant des autres ?
— J’étais une jeune sotte, je prenais des vessies pour des
lanternes, mais il me convenait seulement pour un tas de petites
raisons en dehors de lui.
— Il y a quelques femmes dans le monde dont chacune pourrait
s’imposer à moi pour des raisons qui briseraient mes petites
convenances.
— Bah ! vous ne trouverez pas une femme qui plaise à tout le
monde ou qui vous plaise tout le temps à vous. Alors je n’ai pas tort.
On n’aime pas un être parce qu’il se sépare des autres par des traits
infranchissables. On l’aime parce que cela vous arrange, plus ou
moins longtemps.
Finette disait toujours un être pour ne pas préciser le sexe et
pour ne pas dire : une âme.
— C’est beaucoup, alors que la Nature vous a fait d’une certaine
race, de pouvoir extraire toute sa raison d’être d’une femme, qui
appartienne à cette race, si on a la chance d’en rencontrer une.
Alors on atteint le fond ; c’est tout ce qu’on peut espérer, c’est plus
profond qu’on ne croit, le fond d’une âme. C’est beaucoup à espérer.
— Oh ! le beau parleur ! En attendant, vous courez la prétentaine.
Pour les aimer si nombreuses, il faut que vous jouissiez de quelque
chose de pareil dans toutes. Si vous vouliez jouir de leurs
différences, vous resteriez plus longtemps sur chacune.
— Je n’ai pas dit mon dernier mot ; un jour, peut-être, je
m’arrêterai net sur une femme.
— Quel drôle de type. Vous ne me faites pas marcher, vous
savez. Mais vous, je crois que vous vous mettez dedans, assez
bien. Tout cela c’est de la littérature, une littérature que je n’aime
pas. Ça ne correspond à rien en vous. Vous trotterez de l’une à
l’autre toute votre vie. Et c’est très bien, ça ne prouve pas du tout
que vous soyez superficiel.
— Vous croyez ? Mais vous, vous vous contredisez. Avouez :
votre grand amour c’était plus que vous n’avouez.
— Mais non, je n’ai jamais autant douté de moi-même et de lui
donc ! qu’alors que j’aimais Freddy. J’étais gâteuse, les trois quarts
de la journée, mais j’avais tout le temps des minutes de lucidité.
— Oh évidemment ! Vous n’aviez pas besoin de renoncer à dire
des petites choses cyniques. Habitudes de langage ! ça ne vous
gênait en rien. Vous continuiez à raisonner par instants mais cela
n’avait pas plus d’efficacité qu’une pratique superstitieuse, que de
toucher un talisman.
— J’avais assez d’autres chiens à fouetter pour ne pas avoir le
temps de rêver.
— Quoi ?
— Il fallait que je me défende contre les autres femmes, l’ennui,
la satiété, l’ironie et tant d’autres périls.
— Enfin, vous trouviez en lui quelque chose d’irremplaçable ?
— Un monsieur qui ne peut pas se priver de tabac n’a pas besoin
de fabriquer une philosophie pour expliquer sa manie. C’était par
égoïsme que je me tenais à ce Freddy-là. Pour une femme c’est plus
commode. On ne trouve pas tous les jours chaussure à son pied.
— Mais l’égoïsme cultivé par une personne de tête et de cœur…
— Merci.
— … comme vous, produit des sentiments subtils et sublimes.
Vous ne savez pas ça, Finette ?
— Vous savez ! J’avais de bonnes habitudes de lit, voilà tout.
Pour le reste, je me faisais un mauvais sang abominable, j’inventais
des cruautés pour moi toute seule. Mais au plus fort de mes crises,

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