Stratified Turbulence at High Dynamic Range

Abstract

Stably stratified turbulence (SST) at high buoyancy Reynolds number involves quasi-two-dimensional (Q2D) and fully three-dimensional (3D) inertial ranges. Simulation data suggest that turbulence in the 3D range causes instabilities in the Q2D range that do not occur at low buoyancy Reynolds number. This leads us to hypothesize that important conclusions drawn from published SST data are likely not relevant to the high Reynolds number and low Froude number regime important to the Navy. Direct numerical simulations are proposed of canonical flow configurations with the highest dynamic range possible on the computers operated by the DoD High Performance Computing ModernizationProgram to understand the effects of dynamic range, buoyancy Reynolds number, Prandtl number, and mean shear. Analyses include fully describing vorticity dynamics, closing the energy and vorticity budgets, computing non-linear energy transfers between varies regions in wave number space, anddeveloping closure models for large-eddy simulations (LESs). The results will be applied to LES of stably stratified flows to improve the Navy~s predictions of ship hydrodynamics.

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Apr 25, 2019
Source ID
N000141912152

Entities

People

  • Stephen De Bruyn Kops

Organizations

  • Office of Naval Research
  • United States Navy
  • University of Massachusetts

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster