Withdrawal from a reservoir of stratified fluid

A series of laboratory experiments are described in which the following major features of the flow field were observed. Well above the outlet the flow was essentially one of uniform vertical velocity, which is such that the free surface falls at a rate determined by the mass flux through the outlet, the isopycnics remaining horizontal. The small vertical velocity is converted to a considerably larger horizontal velocity in an essentially horizontal layer near the level of the outlet slot. The width of this withdrawal layer was almost constant over a large portion of the tank (except for the region near the outlet), and the velocity field within it was found to be steady after an initial period of establishment. Also the horizontal velocity at a given level in the withdrawal layer was found, to a good approximation, to vary linearly with the distance along the tank, and the velocity distribution, at a given station, was determined principally by the viscous stress, once a representative length had been established. For flows initiated in a uniform tank by suddenly opening a valve in the outlet line, the width of the withdrawal layer seemed to be uniquely determined on a scale, dependent on the flux, that appears to derive from terms that are negligible once the steady flow has been established. By placing suitable obstructions in the tank it was possible to obtain similar flows, but with various widths. We were also able to change the structure of the withdrawal layer by controlling the way the mass flux was brought to its final value, thereby establishing that the width of the withdrawal layer was dependent on its history.

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-104
Author(s):  
David A. Short ◽  
Francis J. Merceret

Abstract In the presence of 3D turbulence, peak horizontal velocity estimates from an idealized Doppler profiler are found to be positively biased due to an incomplete specification of the vertical velocity field. The magnitude of the bias was estimated by assuming that the vertical and horizontal velocities can be separated into average and perturbation values and that the vertical and horizontal velocity perturbations are normally distributed. Under these assumptions, properties of the type-I extreme value distribution for maxima, known as the Gumbel distribution, can be used to obtain an analytical solution of the bias. The bias depends on geometric properties of the profiler configuration, the variance in the horizontal velocity, and the unresolved variance in the vertical velocity. When these variances are normalized by the average horizontal velocity, the bias can be mapped as a simple function of the normalized variances.


Author(s):  
Chittiappa Muthanna ◽  
Carl Trygve Stansberg ◽  
Rolf Baarholm ◽  
Astrid Harendza ◽  
Mia Priscic

The velocity field in the wave crest zone during wave impact phenomena was successfully measured using a 2 component PIV technique with a simplified two dimensional box model in a wave tank. Measurements were made for two different regular wave conditions and of the undisturbed wave field for the two wave conditions in order to study the influence of the modeled platform deck. The measurements of the wave velocity field showed that for the higher amplitude wave condition, vertical velocity components were amplified in the wave run up region, and away from this region, were not as heavily influenced as the horizontal velocity component. For the smaller wave amplitude vertical velocity components were reduced slightly, whereas the horizontal velocity components did not seem to be influenced. The measurements showed that the PIV technique is a practical and feasible tool in which to study and measure the wave velocity field, but it does come with some limitations.


1999 ◽  
Vol 45 (151) ◽  
pp. 533-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Reeh ◽  
Søren Nørvang Madsen ◽  
Johan Jakob Mohr

AbstractUntil now, an assumption of surface-parallel glacier flow has been used to express the vertical velocity component in terms of the horizontal velocity vector, permitting all three velocity components to be determined from synthetic aperture radar interferometry. We discuss this assumption, which neglects the influence of the local mass balance and a possible contribution to the vertical velocity arising if the glacier is not in steady state. We find that the mass-balance contribution to the vertical surface velocity is not always negligible as compared to the surface-slope contribution. Moreover, the vertical velocity contribution arising if the ice sheet is not in steady state can be significant. We apply the principle of mass conservation to derive an equation relating the vertical surface velocity to the horizontal velocity vector. This equation, valid for both steady-state and non-steady-state conditions, depends on the ice-thickness distribution. Replacing the surface-parallel-flow assumption with a correct relationship between the surface velocity components requires knowledge of additional quantities such as surface mass balance or ice thickness.


Author(s):  
Mark Pinsky ◽  
Eshkol Eytan ◽  
Ilan Koren ◽  
Orit Altaratz ◽  
Alexander Khain

AbstractAtmospheric motions in clouds and cloud surrounding have a wide range of scales, from several kilometers to centimeters. These motions have different impacts on cloud dynamics and microphysics. Larger-scale motions (hereafter referred to as convective motions) are responsible for mass transport over distances comparable with cloud scale, while motions of smaller scales (hereafter referred to as turbulent motions) are stochastic and responsible for mixing and cloud dilution. This distinction substantially simplifies the analysis of dynamic and microphysical processes in clouds. The present research is Part 1 of the study aimed at describing the method for separating the motion scale into a convective component and a turbulent component. An idealized flow is constructed, which is a sum of an initially prescribed field of the convective velocity with updrafts in the cloud core and downdrafts outside the core, and a stochastic turbulent velocity field obeying the turbulent properties, including the -5/3 law and the 2/3 structure function law. A wavelet method is developed allowing separation of the velocity field into the convective and turbulent components, with parameter values being in a good agreement with those prescribed initially. The efficiency of the method is demonstrated by an example of a vertical velocity field of a cumulus cloud simulated using SAM with bin-microphysics and resolution of 10 m. It is shown that vertical velocity in clouds indeed can be represented as a sum of convective velocity (forming zone of cloud updrafts and subsiding shell) and a stochastic velocity obeying laws of homogeneous and isotropic turbulence.


2018 ◽  
Vol 856 ◽  
pp. 135-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. T. Salesky ◽  
W. Anderson

A number of recent studies have demonstrated the existence of so-called large- and very-large-scale motions (LSM, VLSM) that occur in the logarithmic region of inertia-dominated wall-bounded turbulent flows. These regions exhibit significant streamwise coherence, and have been shown to modulate the amplitude and frequency of small-scale inner-layer fluctuations in smooth-wall turbulent boundary layers. In contrast, the extent to which analogous modulation occurs in inertia-dominated flows subjected to convective thermal stratification (low Richardson number) and Coriolis forcing (low Rossby number), has not been considered. And yet, these parameter values encompass a wide range of important environmental flows. In this article, we present evidence of amplitude modulation (AM) phenomena in the unstably stratified (i.e. convective) atmospheric boundary layer, and link changes in AM to changes in the topology of coherent structures with increasing instability. We perform a suite of large eddy simulations spanning weakly ($-z_{i}/L=3.1$) to highly convective ($-z_{i}/L=1082$) conditions (where$-z_{i}/L$is the bulk stability parameter formed from the boundary-layer depth$z_{i}$and the Obukhov length $L$) to investigate how AM is affected by buoyancy. Results demonstrate that as unstable stratification increases, the inclination angle of surface layer structures (as determined from the two-point correlation of streamwise velocity) increases from$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}\approx 15^{\circ }$for weakly convective conditions to nearly vertical for highly convective conditions. As$-z_{i}/L$increases, LSMs in the streamwise velocity field transition from long, linear updrafts (or horizontal convective rolls) to open cellular patterns, analogous to turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection. These changes in the instantaneous velocity field are accompanied by a shift in the outer peak in the streamwise and vertical velocity spectra to smaller dimensionless wavelengths until the energy is concentrated at a single peak. The decoupling procedure proposed by Mathiset al.(J. Fluid Mech., vol. 628, 2009a, pp. 311–337) is used to investigate the extent to which amplitude modulation of small-scale turbulence occurs due to large-scale streamwise and vertical velocity fluctuations. As the spatial attributes of flow structures change from streamwise to vertically dominated, modulation by the large-scale streamwise velocity decreases monotonically. However, the modulating influence of the large-scale vertical velocity remains significant across the stability range considered. We report, finally, that amplitude modulation correlations are insensitive to the computational mesh resolution for flows forced by shear, buoyancy and Coriolis accelerations.


1976 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Sozou ◽  
W. M. Pickering

In this paper we consider the flow field induced in an incompressible viscous conducting fluid in a hemispherical bowl by a symmetric discharge of electric current from a point source at the centre of the plane end of the hemisphere. This plane end is a free surface. We construct an analytic solution for the slow viscous flow and a numeriacl solution for the nonlinear problem. The streamlines in an axial cross-section form two sets of closed loops, one on either side of the axis. Our computations indicate that, for a given fluid, when the discharged current reaches a certain magnitude the velocity field breaks down. This breakdown probably originates at the vertex of the hemispherical container.


2018 ◽  
Vol 75 (7) ◽  
pp. 2235-2255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil P. Lareau ◽  
Yunyan Zhang ◽  
Stephen A. Klein

Abstract The boundary layer controls on shallow cumulus (ShCu) convection are examined using a suite of remote and in situ sensors at ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP). A key instrument in the study is a Doppler lidar that measures vertical velocity in the CBL and along cloud base. Using a sample of 138 ShCu days, the composite structure of the ShCu CBL is examined, revealing increased vertical velocity (VV) variance during periods of medium cloud cover and higher VV skewness on ShCu days than on clear-sky days. The subcloud circulations of 1791 individual cumuli are also examined. From these data, we show that cloud-base updrafts, normalized by convective velocity, vary as a function of updraft width normalized by CBL depth. It is also found that 63% of clouds have positive cloud-base mass flux and are linked to coherent updrafts extending over the depth of the CBL. In contrast, negative mass flux clouds lack coherent subcloud updrafts. Both sets of clouds possess narrow downdrafts extending from the cloud edges into the subcloud layer. These downdrafts are also present adjacent to cloud-free updrafts, suggesting they are mechanical in origin. The cloud-base updraft data are subsequently combined with observations of convective inhibition to form dimensionless “cloud inhibition” (CI) parameters. Updraft fraction and liquid water path are shown to vary inversely with CI, a finding consistent with CIN-based closures used in convective parameterizations. However, we also demonstrate a limited link between CBL vertical velocity variance and cloud-base updrafts, suggesting that additional factors, including updraft width, are necessary predictors for cloud-base updrafts.


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