Small scale dynamics of isotropic viscoelastic turbulence

The comparison of the results of direct numerical simulations of isotropic turbulence of Newtonian and viscoelastic fluid provides evidence that viscoelasticity modifies qualitatively the behavior of the smallest scales: we observe a power law in the far dissipation range of the fluid kinetic energy spectrum and we show that it is a robust feature, roughly independent of the large scale dynamics. A detailed analysis of the energy transfer shows that at these scales energy is injected into the fluid flow through polymer relaxation. It is further shown that a part of the total energy is transferred among scales through an interaction of the velocity field with the polymer field.