Publications

We study Marangoni roll cell convection in a ternary mass transfer system composed of cyclohexanol, water and butanol (transferred species) placed in a Hele-Shaw cell. A detailed comparison of experimental and numerical results is carried out for four different cases including horizontal and vertical orientation as well as small and large gap width of the Hele-Shaw cell. The numerical simulations are based on a common gap-averaged model. For the small gap width, the numerical results qualitatively represent the experimental results. However, by comparison with the experiments, the time evolution in the simulation appears generally retarded. The results show that three-dimensional flow effects have to be expected in particular for a horizontal orientation and a large gap width.

We present results of a numerical analysis of relaminarization processes in MHD duct and pipe flows. It is motivated by Julius Hartmann's classical experiments on flows of mercury in pipes and ducts under the influence of magnetic fields. The simulations, conducted both in periodic and non-periodic settings, provide a first detailed view of flow structures that have not been experimentally accessible. The main novelty of the analysis is very long (tens to hundreds of hydraulic diameters) computational domains that allows to discover new flow regimes with localized turbulent spots near the side walls parallel tonthe magnetic field. The computed critical parameters for transition as well as the friction coefficients are in good agreement with Hartmann's data.

This study combines observations, large-eddy simulations (LES), and direct numerical simulations (DNS) in order to analyze entrainment and mixing in shallow cumulus clouds at all relevant spatial scales and, additionally, to verify the results by the multiple methods used. The observations are based on three flights of the CARRIBA campaign which are similar to the classical BOMEX case used for LES. Virtual flights in the LES data are used to validate the observational method of line measurements. It is shown that line measurements overrepresent the cloud core, and it is quantified how derived statistics depend on small perturbations of the flight track, which has to be taken in account for the interpretation of airborne observations. A linear relation between fluctuations of temperature and liquid water content has been found in both LES and observations in a good quantitative agreement. However, the constant of proportionality deviates from purely adiabatic estimates, which can be attributed to cloud edge mixing. The cloud edge is compared in detail in observations and LES, which agree qualitatively although the LES cloud edge is smoother due to the model's resolution. The resulting typical amplitudes of the turbulence fields from this comparison are compared with the large-scale forcing model which is used in a series of DNS which study the mixing below the meter scale, which show that LES does not resolve the intermittency of small-scale turbulence.

We compute fully local boundary layer scales in three-dimensional turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection. These scales are directly connected to the highly intermittent fluctuations of the fluxes of momentum and heat at the isothermal top and bottom walls and are statistically distributed around the corresponding mean thickness scales. The local boundary layer scales also reflect the strong spatial inhomogeneities of both boundary layers due to the large-scale, but complex and intermittent, circulation that builds up in closed convection cells. Similar to turbulent boundary layers, we define inner scales based on local shear stress that can be consistently extended to the classical viscous scales in bulk turbulence, e.g. the Kolmogorov scale, and outer scales based on slopes at the wall. We discuss the consequences of our generalization, in particular the scaling of our inner and outer boundary layer thicknesses and the resulting shear Reynolds number with respect to the Rayleigh number. The mean outer thickness scale for the temperature field is close to the standard definition of a thermal boundary layer thickness. In the case of the velocity field, under certain conditions the outer scale follows a scaling similar to that of the Prandtl-Blasius type definition with respect to the Rayleigh number, but differs quantitatively. The friction coefficient c [epsilon] scaling is found to fall right between the laminar and turbulent limits, which indicates that the boundary layer exhibits transitional behaviour. Additionally, we conduct an analysis of the recently suggested dissipation layer thickness scales versus the Rayleigh number and find a transition in the scaling. All our investigations are based on highly accurate spectral element simulations that reproduce gradients and their fluctuations reliably. The study is done for a Prandtl number of Pr=0.7 and for Rayleigh numbers that extend over almost five orders of magnitude, 3 × 10^5 ≤ Ra ≤ 10^10, in cells with an aspect ratio of one. We also performed one study with an aspect ratio equal to three in the case of Ra=108. For both aspect ratios, we find that the scale distributions depend on the position at the plates where the analysis is conducted.

We study the effects of electrically conducting walls on the interaction between a small cubic permanent magnet and liquid-metal flow in a cylindrical pipe using experiments and electromagnetic simulation. The problem is motivated by Lorentz force velocimetry, where the drag force on the magnet due to the induced eddy currents in the flow is used for flow measurement. Compared with insulating walls, the conducting walls lead to an increased drag force on the magnet. Except for low distances, the experimental results are satisfactorily reproduced in simulations using a point dipole approximation of the magnetic field.