Computational Validation of Closure Redistribution in Turbulent Flow: Structural Nulls, Reclosure Latency, and Regenerative Precursors

Turbulent flows persist even though their individual coherent forms continually deform, merge, fragment, and disappear. Established turbulence theory describes energy transfer, spectra, coherent structures, self-sustaining processes, and state-space transitions, but these descriptions are not usually combined into one computational test of whether organized process roles are restored before their supporting relations degrade. This manuscript develops a preregisterable validation architecture for that question. Benchmark A uses periodic two-dimensional turbulence and physically constrained equal-energy phase surrogates to test whether matched modal-energy amplitudes permit different measured organization and different future viable successor production. Benchmark B uses transitional plane Couette flow to measure openings, viable reclosure, degradation, class-level successor structure, time-respecting regenerative networks, relaminarization prediction, and warning lead. Bridge Experiment C applies graded matched-energy phase perturbations directly to wall-bounded states. The candidate diagnostic profile includes correlation, phase, topology, boundary, residence, structural-transfer, and regenerative components. The central temporal quantity is the reclosure-latency ratio Λ_R = τ_R/τ_D. Population and network reductions include a viability-weighted successor matrix, a time-respecting regenerative core, pathway redundancy, and process-loop completion time. Four evidential gates separate structural discrimination, regenerative measurement, predictive nonredundancy, and temporal precedence. The paper is a complete computational protocol and falsifiable research proposition; it does not yet report completed direct numerical simulation results. The strongest original idea is not simply “turbulence regenerates.” Regeneration cycles are already part of wall-turbulence theory. The stronger contribution is the proposition that persistence can be tested as the restoration of viable process relations before degradation, together with the machinery required to determine whether this description contains information beyond conventional energetic and structural variables. Keywords: turbulence; coherent structures; phase surrogates; self-sustaining process; reclosure latency; regenerative networks; relaminarization; early warning; computational validation