Extracting self-similarity from data*

The identification of self-similarity is an indispensable tool for understanding and modelling a wide variety of fluid mechanical phenomena. Unfortunately, this is not always possible to perform formally in highly complex problems. We propose a methodology to extract the similarity variables of a self-similar physical process directly from data, without prior knowledge of the governing equations or boundary conditions, based on an optimization problem and symbolic regression. We analyze the accuracy and robustness of our method in four problems which have been influential in fluid mechanics research: a laminar boundary layer, Burger’s equation, a turbulent wake, and a collapsing cavity. Our analysis considers datasets acquired via both numerical and wind-tunnel experiments.