Speakers

Two-dimensional turbulence on a confined domain with no-slip walls

GertJan van Heijst & Herman Clercx
JM Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics
and
Department of Physics
Eindhoven University of Technology
Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The inverse energy cascade active in two-dimensional (2D) turbulence results in the emergence of increasingly larger vortex structures. In the case of a turbulent flow in a confinement with no-slip walls, these vortical structures tend to be domain-filling.

This tendency has been confirmed by both laboratory experiments with confined rotating or stratified fluids and by 2D numerical flow simulations based on spectral methods. Close inspection of the results have revealed the crucial role played by the no-slip boundaries: boundary layers associated with the no-slip character of the walls are scraped off by approaching vortices, leading to intense vorticity filaments that are advected into the interior of the flow domain. This mechanism affects the evolution of the 2D turbulent flow quite seriously, even at relatively large distances from the walls.

The lecture will provide an overview of ongoing work on the dynamics of both forced and decaying 2D turbulent flow in a no-slip confinement, including some recent results on tracer transport.

Reference
    G.J.F. van Heijst, H.J.H. Clercx and D. Molenaar – The effects of solid boundaries on confined two-dimensional turbulence. J. Fluid Mech. 554, 411-431 (2006)