  The interaction between turbulence and surface tension is studied numerically
using the one-dimensional-turbulence (ODT) model. ODT is a stochastic model
simulating turbulent flow evolution along a notional one-dimensional line of
sight by applying instantaneous maps that represent the effects of individual
turbulent eddies on property fields. It provides affordable high resolution of
interface creation and property gradients within each phase, which are key for
capturing the local behavior as well as overall trends, and has been shown to
reproduce the main features of an experimentally determined regime diagram for
primary jet breakup. Here, ODT is used to investigate the interaction of
turbulence with an initially planar interface. The notional flat interface is
inserted into a periodic box of decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence,
simulated for a variety of turbulent Reynolds and Weber numbers. Unity density
and viscosity ratios serve to focus solely on the interaction between fluid
inertia and the surface-tension force. Statistical measures of interface
surface density and spatial structure along the direction normal to the initial
surface are compared to corresponding direct-numerical-simulation (DNS) data.
Allowing the origin of the lateral coordinate system to follow the location of
the median interface element improves the agreement between ODT and DNS,
reflecting the absence of lateral non-vortical displacements in ODT. Beyond the
DNS-accessible regime, ODT is shown to obey the predicted parameter
dependencies of the Kolmogorov critical scale in both the inertial and
dissipative turbulent-cascade sub-ranges. Notably, the probability density
function of local fluctuations of the critical scale is found to collapse to a
universal curve across both sub-ranges.
