Turbulence: Adequate scaling thanks to surface roughness

Turbulence in oceans, in the atmosphere or in industry, is billions of times stronger than in lab experiments. Simply upscaling the lab results is not an option. Theoretically, however, there is a regime of turbulence in which scaling laws apply. Researchers have succeeded in reaching this ‘asymptotic ultimate regime’ of turbulence, by introducing roughness at the surface at which turbulent liquid flows.