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Stratified circular Couette flow: instability and flow regimes
- B. M. Boubnov, E. B. Gledzer, E. J. Hopfinger
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- Journal:
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics / Volume 292 / 10 June 1995
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 April 2006, pp. 333-358
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The stability conditions of the flow between two concentric cylinders with the inner one rotating (circular Couette flow) have been investigated experimentally and theoretically for a fluid with axial, stable linear density stratification. The behaviour of the flow, therefore, depends on the Froude number Fr = Ω/N (where Ω is the angular velocity of the inner cylinder and N is the buoyancy frequency of the fluid) in addition to the Reynolds number and the non-dimensional gap width ε, here equal to 0.275.
Experiments show that stratification has a stabilizing effect on the flow with the critical Reynolds number depending on N, in agreement with linear stability theory. The selected, most amplified, vertical wavelength at onset of instability is reduced by the stratification effect and is for the geometry considered only about half the gap width. Furthermore, the observed instability is non-axisymmetric. The resulting vortex motion causes some mixing and this leads to layer formation, clearly visible on shadowgraph images, with the height of the layer being determined by the vertical vortex size. This regime of vertically reduced vortex size is referred to as the S-regime.
For larger Reynolds and Froude numbers the role of stratification decreases and the most amplified vertical wavelength is determined by the gap width, giving rise to the usual Taylor vortices (we call this the T-regime). The layers which emerge are determined by these vortices. For relatively small Reynolds number when Fr ≈ 1 the Taylor vortices are stable and the layers have a height h equal to the gap width; for larger Reynolds number or Fr ≈ 2 the Taylor vortices interact in pairs (compacted Taylor vortices, regime CT) and layers of twice the gap width are predominant. Stratification inhibits the azimuthal wavy vortex flow observed in homogeneous fluid. By further increasing the Reynolds number, turbulent motions appear with Taylor vortices superimposed like in non-stratified fluid.
The theoretical analysis is based on a linear stability consideration of the axisymmetric problem. This gives bounds of instability in the parameter space (Ω, N) for given vertical and radial wavenumbers. These bounds are in qualitative agreement with experiments. The possibility of oscillatory-type instability (overstability) observed experimentally is also discussed.
Source–sink turbulence in a rotating stratified fluid
- P. F. Linden, B. M. Boubnov, S. B. Dalziel
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- Journal:
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics / Volume 298 / 10 September 1995
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 April 2006, pp. 81-112
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In a recent paper Boubnov, Dalziel & Linden (1994) described the response of a stratified fluid to forcing produced by an array of sources and sinks. The sources and sinks were located in a horizontal plane and the flow from the sources was directed horizontally so that fluid was withdrawn from, and re-injected at, its own density level. As a result vertical vorticity was imparted to the fluid with a minimum of vertical mixing. It was found that when the stratification was strong enough to suppress vertical motions an inverse energy cascade was observed leading to the establishment of a large-scale circulation in the fluid. Those experiments were restricted to eight source-sink pairs. The present paper extends this work in two ways. First, up to forty source-sink pairs are used to force the flow, thereby producing a much wider separation of scales between the forcing and the flow domain. An inverse cascade is again found, but in this case the energy transfer to large scales is more rapid. The basic pattern of the large-scale flow is independent of the number of sources but the detailed structure depends on the energy input scale. Second, the effects of rotation about a vertical axis are investigated. It is found that when the Rossby deformation radius exceeds the size of the flow domain, the inverse energy cascade still occurs. However, for smaller values of the deformation scale, which in these experiments are comparable to or smaller than the forcing scale, the inverse cascade is altered by baroclinic instability. When flow structures develop on a scale larger than the deformation scale, usually by the merging of vortices of like sign, these structures are observed to split into smaller vortices of a scale comparable to the deformation scale. The flow appears to evolve with a balance between an anticascade produced by the two-dimensionality of the flow and a cascade due to baroclinic instability. For Rossby radii much smaller than the domain size the flow evolves into finite clumps of vorticity and an asymmetry between anticyclones and cyclones develops. A predominance of coherent anticyclones is observed, and the cyclonic vorticity is contained in more diffuse structures.
Temperature and velocity field regimes of convective motions in a rotating plane fluid layer
- B. M. Boubnov, G. S. Golitsyn
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- Journal:
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics / Volume 219 / October 1990
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 April 2006, pp. 215-239
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The paper is a continuation of work published in Boubnov & Golitsyn (1986). We present new measurements of the temperature and velocity field patterns and their statistical characteristics. This allows us to classify regimes of convection in a plane rotating horizontal fluid layer in terms of Rayleigh and Taylor numbers. Within the irregular regimes geostrophic convection is found for which the Rossby number is much less than unity.
In the regular regimes the mean temperature profiles are linear with height in the bulk of the fluid, the gradient being dependent mainly on rotation rate Ω and fluid depth h. These together with some dimensional arguments lead to the heat transfer relationship Nu ∝ Ra3Ta−2 between Nusselt, Rayleigh and Taylor numbers. Experimental results by Rossby (1969) and theoretical work by Chan (1974) and Riahi (1977) suggested this dependence. The dependence on ωτ of the temperature power spectrum normalized by the variance was found to be universal at higher frequencies for all irregular convective motions, where τ is the timescale of the thermal boundary layer for cases with a small influence of rotation and with τ about three times larger (in numerical coefficient) for geostrophic convection. For irregular geostrophic regimes it is found that the temperature variance depends on rotation rate and heat flux, and is inversely proportional to the buoyancy parameter.
Horizontal and vertical components of the velocity fields were measured for regular as well as irregular regimes, confirming, especially for geostrophic convection, the theoretical results by Golitsyn (1980). In conclusion some geophysical applications are briefly mentioned.
Source-sink turbulence in a stratified fluid
- B. M. Boubnov, S. B. Dalziel, P. F. Linden
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- Journal:
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics / Volume 261 / 25 February 1994
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 April 2006, pp. 273-303
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A new method of generating turbulence in a stratified fluid is presented. The flow is forced by a symmetric array of sources and sinks placed around the perimeter of a tank containing stratified fluid. The sources and sinks are located in a horizontal plane and the flow from the sources is directed horizontally, so that fluid is withdrawn from and re-injected at its neutral density level with some horizontal momentum. The sources and sinks are arranged so that no net impulse or angular momentum is imparted to the flow. Measurements of the mixing produced by the turbulence are made using a conductivity probe to record the vertical density profile. The flow field is measured by tracking small neutrally buoyant particles which are placed within the fluid. The tracking of the particles and analysis of the flow fields are done automatically using DigImage, a recently developed suite of particle tracking software. The characteristics of the flow are found to depend on the forcing parameter F = V/Nd, where V is the mean velocity of the flow through the source orifices, d is the diameter of the sources and sinks and N is the buoyancy frequency of the stratification. At large F three-dimensional turbulence is produced within a mixed layer centred on the level of the sources and sinks. A comparison of mixing rates measured in this and more conventional experiments is made, and it is concluded that in terms of the local turbulence parameters the entrainment rates are similar. At low F, no significant mixing occurs and the flow is approximately two-dimensional with very small vertical velocities. Under these circumstances a qualitative change in the characteristics of the flow occurs after the experiment has been running for some hours. It is observed that the scale of the motion increases until there is an accumulation of the energy at the largest scale that can be accommodated within the tank. The structure of this large-scale circulation is analysed and it is found that a form of vorticity expulsion from the interior of the circulation has occurred. These results are compared with numerical simulations of two-dimensional turbulence, and some measurements of turbulent decay are discussed.
Experimental study of convective structures in rotating fluids
- B. M. Boubnov, G. S. Golitsyn
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- Journal:
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics / Volume 167 / June 1986
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 April 2006, pp. 503-531
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We describe a series of laboratory experiments to study convective structures in rotating fluids (distilled water) in ranges of Rayleigh flux number Raf from 106 to 2 × 1011 and of Taylor number Ta from 106 to 1012. An intermediate quasi-stationary ring pattern of convection was found to arise from the interaction of the onset of convection with the fluid spin-up, for which we determined the times of origin and destruction, the distances between the rings, and the diameter of the central ring in terms of Raf and Ta. The ring structure evolves into a vortex grid which can be regular or irregular. In terms of Raf and Ta the regular grid exists in the linear regime, when the number of vortices N is in accord with the linear theory, when $N \propto h^{-2} Ta^{\frac{1}{3}} \propto \Omega^{\frac{2}{3}}$, or in the nonlinear regime when N ∝ h−2Ta½Raf−⅙ ∝ where Ω is the angular velocity and h is the fluid depth. In the irregular regime we always have N ∝ Ω. The transition from the regular regime to the irregular one is rather gradual and is determined by the value of the ordinary Rayleigh number, which we found to be greater than the first critical number Ra ∝ Ta2/3 by a factor about 25–40. In the transition region vortex interactions are observed, which start with rotation of two adjacent vortices around a common axis, then the vortices come closer and rotation accelerates, following which the vortices form a double helix and then coalesce into one stronger vortex.
Some other qualitative experiments show that if the rotating vessel with the convective fluid is inclined to the horizontal, the vortex grid is formed along the rotation axis in accordance with the Proudman–Taylor theorem.