2010/04/25 by Susan Kurien, Kurien, Susan
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Chaotic Dynamics (nlin.CD) #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Fluid Dynamics and Vibration Analysis #Lattice Boltzmann Simulation Studies #nlin.CD
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1005.5366
34 pages in JFM referee format, 9 figures (color online), submitted as regular article to Journal of Fluid Mechanics. More detailed abstract in manuscript
openalex publication_date 2010/04/25 · arxiv created 2010/07/13 · arxiv updated 2010/07/14 · openalex created_date 2022/10/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Phenomenological and numerical studies of the small scale spectra of energy\nare presented for high Reynolds number rotating Boussinesq flows in unit\naspect-ratio domains. We introduce a non-dimensional parameter Gamma such that\nwhen the potential vorticity is nearly linear in the dynamical variables, we\ndeduce that for Gamma much less than 1, the potential enstrophy suppresses the\ntransfer of horizontal kinetic energy into wavemodes with large horizontal\ncomponent kh while forcing it to become independent of vertical wavevector\ncomponent kz, scaling as kh-5. When Gamma much greater than 1, the\npotential enstrophy suppresses the transfer of potential energy into the\nwavemodes with large vertical component kz while forcing it to become\nindependent of kh, scaling as kz^-5) power. Spectra computed from\nhigh-resolution simulations of the Boussinesq equations with isotropic\nlow-wavenumber forcing are used to explore such anisotropic constraints on the\nenergy and provide a posteriori justification for the joint flux ansatz used to\nobtain the (-5) scaling exponent. In all cases the empirical evidence points to\nboth energy and potential enstrophy being jointly transferred downscale with\nthe spectral scaling of the the former constrained by the latter.\n