scholarly journals Small Scale Statistics of Turbulent Fluctuations Close to a Stagnation Point

Author(s):  
Peter D. Huck ◽  
Nathanael Machicoane ◽  
Romain Volk
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 192
Author(s):  
Richard Styles ◽  
Michael A. Hartman

Vessel generated waves can impact shoreline stability and habitat structure in many waterways. Sheltered regions, such as coastal plain saltmarshes, support fragile ecosystems and can be particularly vulnerable to the effects of unregulated vessel operations. Instruments for measuring currents and sediment concentration were deployed in a coastal plain saltmarsh to examine the small-scale physical characteristics of the vessel wake generated by recreational craft typical of this environment. The response to vessel wake varied sharply depending upon the stage of the tide. At low tide, waves breaking on the exposed bank produced high concentrations of suspended material that were transported offshore through turbulent diffusion. When the water elevation exceeded the toe of the marsh scarp, the concentration and turbulent kinetic energy exhibited less of a statistically significant variation in response to vessel passage. For the most energetic flows, the vessel orbital velocities were dwarfed by turbulent fluctuations generated by the sheared tidal boundary layer. While further research is required, preliminary findings indicate that the dissipation of vessel wake energy may stimulate or enhance shear generated turbulence if the characteristic wave period is similar to the characteristic time scale of the energy containing eddies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse C. Anderson ◽  
Subin Thomas ◽  
Prasanth Prabhakaran ◽  
Raymond A. Shaw ◽  
Will Cantrell

Abstract. Microphysical processes are important for the development of clouds and thus Earth's climate. For example, turbulent fluctuations in the water vapor concentration, r, and temperature, T, cause fluctuations in the saturation ratio, S. Because S is the driving factor in the condensational growth of droplets, fluctuations may broaden the cloud droplet size distribution due to individual droplets experiencing different growth rates. The small scale turbulent fluctuations in the atmosphere that are relevant to cloud droplets are difficult to quantify through field measurements. We investigate these processes in the laboratory, using Michigan Tech's Π Chamber. The Π Chamber utilizes Rayleigh-Benard convection (RBC) to create the turbulent conditions inherent in clouds. In RBC it is common for a large scale circulation (LSC) to form. As a consequence of the LSC, the temperature field of the chamber is not spatially uniform. In this paper, we characterize the LSC in the Π chamber and show how it affects the shape of the distributions of r, T and S. The LSC was found to follow a single roll with an updraft and downdraft along opposing walls of the chamber. Near the updraft (downdraft), the distributions of T and r were positively (negatively) skewed. S consistently had a negatively skewed distribution, with the downdraft being the most negative.


Author(s):  
G. G. Howes

A dynamical approach, rather than the usual statistical approach, is taken to explore the physical mechanisms underlying the nonlinear transfer of energy, the damping of the turbulent fluctuations, and the development of coherent structures in kinetic plasma turbulence. It is argued that the linear and nonlinear dynamics of Alfvén waves are responsible, at a very fundamental level, for some of the key qualitative features of plasma turbulence that distinguish it from hydrodynamic turbulence, including the anisotropic cascade of energy and the development of current sheets at small scales. The first dynamical model of kinetic turbulence in the weakly collisional solar wind plasma that combines self-consistently the physics of Alfvén waves with the development of small-scale current sheets is presented and its physical implications are discussed. This model leads to a simplified perspective on the nature of turbulence in a weakly collisional plasma: the nonlinear interactions responsible for the turbulent cascade of energy and the formation of current sheets are essentially fluid in nature, while the collisionless damping of the turbulent fluctuations and the energy injection by kinetic instabilities are essentially kinetic in nature.


2019 ◽  
Vol 876 ◽  
pp. 818-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Raynal ◽  
Romain Volk

We study the joint mixing of colloids and salt released together in a stagnation point or in a globally chaotic flow. In the presence of salt inhomogeneities, the mixing time is strongly modified depending on the sign of the diffusiophoretic coefficient $D_{dp}$. Mixing is delayed when $D_{dp}>0$ (salt-attracting configuration), or faster when $D_{dp}<0$ (salt-repelling configuration). In both configurations, as for molecular diffusion alone, large scales are barely affected in the dilating direction while the Batchelor scale for the colloids, $\ell _{c,diff}$, is strongly modified by diffusiophoresis. We propose here to measure a global effect of diffusiophoresis in the mixing process through an effective Péclet number built on this modified Batchelor scale. Whilst this small scale is obtained analytically for the stagnation point, in the case of chaotic advection, we derive it using the equation of gradients of concentration, following Raynal & Gence (Intl J. Heat Mass Transfer, vol. 40 (14), 1997, pp. 3267–3273). Comparing to numerical simulations, we show that the mixing time can be predicted by using the same function as in absence of salt, but as a function of the effective Péclet numbers computed for each configuration. The approach is shown to be valid when the ratio $D_{dp}^{2}/D_{s}D_{c}\gg 1$, where $D_{c}$ and $D_{s}$ are the diffusivities of the colloids and salt.


2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Leubner ◽  
Z. Vörös

Abstract. The observed scale dependence of the probability distributions of the differences of characteristic solar wind variables is analyzed. Intermittency of the turbulent fluctuations at small-scale spatial separations is accompanied by strongly non-Gaussian distributions that turn into a normal distribution for large-scale separation. Conventional theoretical models are subject to insufficient physical justification since nonlocality in turbulence should be based on long-range interactions, provided recently by the bi-kappa distribution in the context of nonextensive thermo-statistics. Observed WIND and ACE probability distributions are accurately reproduced for different time lags by the one-parameter bi-kappa functional, a core-halo convolution, where kappa measures the degree of nonlocality or nonextensivity in the system. Gradual decoupling is obtained by enhancing the spatial separation scale corresponding to increasing kappa values, where a Gaussian is approached for infinite kappa. Consequently, long-range interactions introduced on the fundamental level of entropy generalization, are able to provide physically the source of the observed scale dependence of the turbulent fluctuations in the intermittent interplanetary medium.


2015 ◽  
Vol 92 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ganapati Sahoo ◽  
Fabio Bonaccorso ◽  
Luca Biferale

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Babkovskaia ◽  
U. Rannik ◽  
V. Phillips ◽  
H. Siebert ◽  
B. Wehner ◽  
...  

Abstract. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of aerosol dynamics (evaporation/condensation) on atmospheric small-scale turbulence (and vice versa) using direct numerical simulations (DNS). We consider the domain located on the height of about 2000 m from the sea level, experiencing transient high supersaturation due to atmospheric fluctuations of temperature and humidity. To study the effect of aerosol dynamics on the turbulence we vary the total number of particles (Ntot). In turn, to investigate the effect of small-scale turbulence on evolution of aerosol particles we vary the intensity of turbulent fluctuations and the buoyant force. We find that even small amount of aerosol particles (55.5 cm−3) increases the air temperature by 1 K under supersaturated conditions due to release of latent heat. The system comes to an equilibrium faster and the relative number of activated particles appears to be smaller for larger Ntot. We conclude that the presence of aerosol particles results in deceleration of air motion in vertical direction and damping of turbulent fluctuations.


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