The decay characteristics and invariants of grid turbulence were investigated by means of laboratory experiments conducted in a wind tunnel. A turbulence-generating grid was installed at the entrance of the test section for generating nearly isotropic turbulence. Five grids (square bars of mesh sizes $M= 15$, 25 and 50 mm and cylindrical bars of mesh sizes $M= 10$ and 25 mm) were used. The solidity of all grids is $\sigma = 0. 36$. The instantaneous streamwise and vertical (cross-stream) velocities were measured by hot-wire anemometry. The mesh Reynolds numbers were adjusted to $R{e}_{M} = 6700$, 9600, 16 000 and 33 000. The Reynolds numbers based on the Taylor microscale $R{e}_{\lambda } $ in the decay region ranged from 27 to 112. In each case, the result shows that the decay exponent of turbulence intensity is close to the theoretical value of ${- }6/ 5$ (for the $M= 10~\mathrm{mm} $ grid, ${- }6(1+ p)/ 5\sim - 1. 32$) for Saffman turbulence. Here, $p$ is the power of the dimensionless energy dissipation coefficient, $A(t)\sim {t}^{p} $. Furthermore, each case shows that streamwise variations in the integral length scales, ${L}_{uu} $ and ${L}_{vv} $, and the Taylor microscale $\lambda $ grow according to ${L}_{uu} \sim 2{L}_{vv} \propto {(x/ M- {x}_{0} / M)}^{2/ 5} $ (for the $M= 10~\mathrm{mm} $ grid, ${L}_{uu} \propto {(x/ M- {x}_{0} / M)}^{2(1+ p)/ 5} \sim {(x/ M- {x}_{0} / M)}^{0. 44} $) and $\lambda \propto {(x/ M- {x}_{0} / M)}^{1/ 2} $, respectively, at $x/ M\gt 40{\unicode{x2013}} 60$ (depending on the experimental conditions, including grid geometry), where $x$ is the streamwise distance from the grid and ${x}_{0} $ is the virtual origin. We demonstrated that in the decay region of grid turbulence, ${ u}_{\mathit{rms}}^{2} { L}_{uu}^{3} $ and ${ v}_{\mathit{rms}}^{2} { L}_{vv}^{3} $, which correspond to Saffman’s integral, are constant for all grids and examined $R{e}_{M} $ values. However, ${ u}_{\mathit{rms}}^{2} { L}_{uu}^{5} $ and ${ v}_{\mathit{rms}}^{2} { L}_{vv}^{5} $, which correspond to Loitsianskii’s integral, and ${ u}_{\mathit{rms}}^{2} { L}_{uu}^{2} $ and ${ v}_{\mathit{rms}}^{2} { L}_{vv}^{2} $, which correspond to the complete self-similarity of energy spectrum and $\langle {\boldsymbol{u}}^{2} \rangle \sim {t}^{- 1} $, are not constant. Consequently, we conclude that grid turbulence is a type of Saffman turbulence for the examined $R{e}_{M} $ range of 6700–33 000 ($R{e}_{\lambda } = 27{\unicode{x2013}} 112$) regardless of grid geometry.

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Decaying characteristics of grid turbulence are investigated by means of the laboratory experiments using a wind tunnel. Turbulence-generating grids are installed at the entrance to the test section to generate nearly isotropic turbulence. Four grids (mesh size M = 10, 15, 25 and 50 mm) are used. Instantaneous streamwise velocity is measured by a hot wire anemometer. The mesh Reynolds numbers are adjusted to Re M = 6,700, 9,600, 16,000 and 33,000. In this study, decaying characteristics and invariants of grid turbulence for four grid sizes and Re M are mainly investigated. The result for each case shows that the decay exponent of turbulent intensity is close to a theoretical value of-6 5 for Saffman turbulence. Each case also shows that streamwise variation of integral length scale L uu and Taylor microscale λ grow as L uu ∝ (x M − x 0 M) 2 5 and λ ∝ (x M − x 0 M) 1 2 at (x M − x 0 M) > 50, where x 0 is the virtual origin. Consequently, it is concluded that in the decaying region of grid turbulence, u 2 r.m.s L 3 uu , which corresponds to Saffman's integral, are constant for all grids and Re M examined. However, u 2 r.m.s L 5 uu , which corresponds to Loitsianskii's integral, is not constant.