On some kinematic versus dynamic properties of homogeneous turbulence

A comparison is made between a number of properties of a quasi-homogeneous isotropic turbulent field obtained from a direct numerical simulation of the Navier-Stokes equation and its random counterpart with the same energy spectrum. It is demonstrated that some effects in a real flow have a considerable contribution of a kinematic nature (e.g. reduction of nonlinearity), while others are mostly dynamical (e.g. alignment between vorticity and eigenvectors of the rate of strain).