On the Nature of Turbulence in a Stratified Fluid. Part II: Application to Lakes
Open Access
- 1 May 1991
- journal article
- Published by American Meteorological Society in Journal of Physical Oceanography
- Vol. 21 (5) , 659-680
- https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0485(1991)021<0659:otnoti>2.0.co;2
Abstract
A strong debate has continued for a number of years over the magnitude of the ratio of the buoyancy flux b to the rate of production of turbulent kinetic energy from the mean velocity sheer. This ratio has traditionally been called the flux Richardson number Rf. In part I of Ivey and Imberger this definition was generalized by broadening the denominator to include all sources and sinks of mechanical turbulent kinetic energy, the net being defined as m. It was shown that for mechanically energized turbulence (m > 0, b > 0) the magnitude of Rf was completely determined by the magnitude of the overturn Froude FrT and the Reynolds ReT numbers By contrast, for the penetrative convection case (b < 0) Rf was shown to be dependent only on the distance from the source of buoyancy. In the present contribution, scaling arguments are presented for the magnitudes of FrT and ReT. It is shown that these may vary widely and depend, in the first instance, on the physics of the underlying processes energizing the ... Abstract A strong debate has continued for a number of years over the magnitude of the ratio of the buoyancy flux b to the rate of production of turbulent kinetic energy from the mean velocity sheer. This ratio has traditionally been called the flux Richardson number Rf. In part I of Ivey and Imberger this definition was generalized by broadening the denominator to include all sources and sinks of mechanical turbulent kinetic energy, the net being defined as m. It was shown that for mechanically energized turbulence (m > 0, b > 0) the magnitude of Rf was completely determined by the magnitude of the overturn Froude FrT and the Reynolds ReT numbers By contrast, for the penetrative convection case (b < 0) Rf was shown to be dependent only on the distance from the source of buoyancy. In the present contribution, scaling arguments are presented for the magnitudes of FrT and ReT. It is shown that these may vary widely and depend, in the first instance, on the physics of the underlying processes energizing the ...Keywords
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