Large-scale transport is investigated in terms of new explicit expressions for eddy diffusivities and effective advection obtained from asymptotic perturbative methods. The carrier flow is formed by a large-scale component plus a small-scale contribution mimicking a turbulent flow. The scalar dynamics is observed in its pre-asymptotic regimes (i.e. on scales comparable to those of the large-scale velocity). The resulting eddy diffusivity is thus a tensor field which explicitly depends on the large-scale velocity. Small-scale interactions also cause the emergence of an effective large-scale (compressible) advection field which, as a result of the present study however, turns out to be of negligible importance. Two issues are addressed by means of Lagrangian simulations: quantifying the possible deterioration of the eddy-diffusivity/effective advection description by reducing to zero the spectral gap separating the large-scale velocity component from the small-scale component; comparing the accuracy of our closure against other simple, reasonable, options. Answering these questions is important in view of possible applications of our closure to tracer dispersion in environmental flows.
Explicit expressions for eddy-diffusivity fields and effective large-scale advection in turbulent transport
BOI, SIMONE;MAZZINO, ANDREA;
2016-01-01
Abstract
Large-scale transport is investigated in terms of new explicit expressions for eddy diffusivities and effective advection obtained from asymptotic perturbative methods. The carrier flow is formed by a large-scale component plus a small-scale contribution mimicking a turbulent flow. The scalar dynamics is observed in its pre-asymptotic regimes (i.e. on scales comparable to those of the large-scale velocity). The resulting eddy diffusivity is thus a tensor field which explicitly depends on the large-scale velocity. Small-scale interactions also cause the emergence of an effective large-scale (compressible) advection field which, as a result of the present study however, turns out to be of negligible importance. Two issues are addressed by means of Lagrangian simulations: quantifying the possible deterioration of the eddy-diffusivity/effective advection description by reducing to zero the spectral gap separating the large-scale velocity component from the small-scale component; comparing the accuracy of our closure against other simple, reasonable, options. Answering these questions is important in view of possible applications of our closure to tracer dispersion in environmental flows.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.