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ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/iii/paper-87/3/iv/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 87 3 iv Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The motivation for Kolmogorov refined similarity hypothesis is internal intermittency: instantaneous energy dissipation is spatially uneven, so scaling every velocity increment by the global mean dissipation can mix regions of very different activity. Define the coarse-grained energy dissipation over a region of size byIts mean is in homogeneous turbulence. The refined hypothesis asserts that, at high local Reynolds number and within the inertial range, the normalized incrementhas universal conditional statistics independent of and of . In particular, for finite moments. Taking a conditional expectation and then averaging givesHere is the paper's . Signed odd moments need not have positive coefficients; the third-order forward-cascade coefficient is negative. The signed first moment is zero in homogeneous flow, so one does not assign it a nonzero scaling law. Absolute moments are often used when discussing general positive-order scaling exponents.
The refined hypothesis alone does not specify the distribution of . Kolmogorov's 1962 estimate supplements it with a lognormal intermittency model. Let be Gaussian with variance . The condition fixes its mean at . The Gaussian exponential moment then gives, with ,Combining with the refined moment formula yields, for the nonzero moments described by that model,The intermittency parameter must be supplied by dissipation statistics; it is not determined by dimensional analysis. The formula preserves . Its extrapolation to arbitrarily high orders is not justified: the quadratic correction eventually predicts pathological exponents and is one limitation of the lognormal model, distinct from the refined hypothesis itself.
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