In the context of the analysis of the chaotic properties of homogeneous and isotropic turbulence, direct numerical simulations are used to study the fluctuations of the finite-time Lyapunov exponent (FTLE) and its relation to the Reynolds number, the lattice size, and the choice of the steptime used to compute the Lyapunov exponents. The results show that using the FTLE method produces Lyapunov exponents that are remarkably stable under the variation of the steptime and lattice size. Furthermore, it reaches such stability faster than other characteristic quantities such as energy and dissipation rate. These results remain even if the steptime is made arbitrarily small. A discrepancy is also resolved between previous measurements of the dependence on the Reynolds number of the Lyapunov exponent. The signal produced by different variables in the steady state is analyzed, and the self-decorrelation time is used to determine the run time needed in the simulations to obtain proper statistics for each variable. Finally, a brief analysis on magnetohydrodynamic flows is also presented as an extension to recent work, which shows that the Lyapunov exponent is still a robust measure in the simulations, although the Lyapunov exponent scaling with the Reynolds number is significantly different from that of magnetically neutral hydrodynamic fluids.

• Received 4 September 2019
• Accepted 13 January 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.5.024602