Isotropic boundary adapted wavelets for coherent vorticity extraction in turbulent channel flows

We present a construction of isotropic boundary adapted wavelets, which are orthogonal and yield a multi-resolution analysis. We analyze DNS data of turbulent channel flow computed at a friction-velocity based Reynolds number of 395 and investigate the role of coherent vorticity. Thresholding of the wavelet coefficients allows to split the flow into two parts, coherent and incoherent vorticity. The statistics of the former, i.e., energy and enstrophy spectra, are close to the ones of the total flow, and moreover the nonlinear energy budgets are well preserved. The remaining incoherent part, represented by the large majority of the weak wavelet coefficients, corresponds to a structureless, i.e., noise-like, background flow and exhibits an almost equi-distribution of energy.