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The classical energy cascade in turbulence as described by Richardson and Kolmogorov is predominantly a conjecture relying on the locality of interactions between scales of turbulence. This picture is generally accepted and assumes that energy and enstrophy transfers occur between neighbouring scales of turbulence and that vortex stretching plays a major role in the dynamics of this energy cascade. Direct numerical simulation data for Re λ ranging from 37 to 1131 is used to gather evidence for the cascade by investigating the energy and enstrophy fluxes between scales and the interplay between vorticity at one scale and strain at an adjacent scale. This is achieved by using a bandpass filter to educe the turbulent structures at various length scales allowing one to determine the fluxes between these scales and to interrogate the role of non-local (in physical-space) vortex stretching. It is shown that the structures of a length scale L mostly transfer their energy to structures of size 0.3L and that most of the enstrophy flux goes from structures of scale L to 0.3L. Furthermore, vortical structures of a length scale L ω are stretched mostly by straining structures of size 3 to 5L ω and the stretching by eddies of sizes larger than 10L ω is negligible. The stretching is dominated by the most extensive principal strain rate of the straining structures. These observations are found to be independent of Re λ for the range investigated in this study. These results provide strong evidence for the classical view of an energy cascade transferring energy from large to small scales through a hierarchy of steps, each step consisting of the stretching of vortices by somewhat larger structures.

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To investigate dynamics of vortex clusters and large-scale structures in the outer layer of wall turbulence, direct numerical simulations of turbulent channel flows have been conducted up to Re τ = 1270. In the outer layer, the vortex clusters are composed of coherent fine-scale eddies (CFSEs) of which diameter and maximum azimuthal velocity are scaled by the Kolmogorov length and velocity. The large-scale structure in the outer layer is composed of these clusters of the CFSEs, which contributes to the streamwise velocity deficit (i.e. low-momentum region). The CFSE clusters are observed in the low-momentum regions of the outer layer, and the scale of those clusters tends to be enlarged with the increase of a distance from the wall. The dynamics of large-scale structures reveals that the cluster structure generated in the bottom of the logarithmic region moves downstream and its scale increases with the increase of the low-momentum region. The CFSE clusters in the low-momentum regions of u ≤ −u rms consist of the relatively strong CFSEs, which play an important role in the production of the Reynolds shear stress and the dissipation rate of the turbulent kinetic energy. The process of destruction of the CFSE cluster is also clarified in the outer layer.

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