Irreversible mixing by unstable periodic orbits in buoyancy dominated stratified turbulence

DOI10.1017/JFM.2017.695zbMATH Open1419.76344arXiv1706.02536OpenAlexW3105912222MaRDI QIDQ5225964FDOQ5225964

Authors: Dan Lucas, C. P. Caulfield 

Publication date: 29 July 2019

Published in: Journal of Fluid Mechanics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We consider turbulence driven by a large-scale horizontal shear in Kolmogorov flow (i.e. with sinusoidal body forcing) and a background linear stable stratification with buoyancy frequency $N_B^2$ imposed in the third, vertical direction in a fluid with kinematic viscosity $u$. This flow is known to be organised into layers by nonlinear unstable steady states, which incline the background shear in the vertical and can be demonstrated to be the finite-amplitude saturation of a sequence of instabilities, originally from the laminar state. Here, we investigate the next order of motions in this system, i.e. the time-dependent mechanisms by which the density field is irreversibly mixed. This investigation is achieved using 'recurrent flow analysis'. We identify (unstable) periodic orbits, which are embedded in the turbulent attractor, and use these orbits as proxies for the chaotic flow. We find that the time average of an appropriate measure of the 'mixing efficiency' of the flow $mathscrE=chi/(chi+mathcalD)$ ($mathcalD$ is the volume-averaged kinetic energy dissipation rate and $chi$ is the volume-averaged density variance dissipation rate) varies non-monotonically with the time-averaged buoyancy Reynolds numbers $overline{Re}_B=overlinemathcalD/(u{N}_B^2)$, and is bounded above by $1/6$, consistently with the classical model of Osborn (1980). There are qualitatively different physical properties between the unstable orbits that have lower irreversible mixing efficiency at low $overline{Re}_{B}simO(1)$ and those with nearly optimal $mathscrElesssim1/6$ at intermediate $overline{Re}_{B}sim10$. The weaker orbits, inevitably embedded in more strongly stratified flow, are characterised by straining or 'scouring' motions, while the more efficient orbits have clear overturning dynamics in more weakly stratified, and apparently shear-unstable flow.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.02536

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zbMATH Keywords

nonlinear dynamical systemsturbulent mixingstratified turbulence

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Dynamical systems in fluid mechanics, oceanography and meteorology (37N10) Dynamical systems approach to turbulence (76F20) Stratification effects in turbulence (76F45)

Cites Work

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Cited In (6)

• Free-stream coherent structures in parallel compressible boundary-layer flows at subsonic and moderate supersonic Mach numbers
• Adjoint sensitivity analysis of chaotic systems using cumulant truncation
• Stably stratified exact coherent structures in shear flow: the effect of Prandtl number
• Deep learning of conjugate mappings
• Exploiting self-organized criticality in strongly stratified turbulence
• The linear instability of the stratified plane Couette flow

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