DOI: 10.1615/TSFP6
HOMOGENEOUS TURBULENCE WITH BAROCLINIC INSTABILITY: LINEAR THEORY AND SIMULATIONS
RÉSUMÉ
The coupled effects of mean shear, density-stratification
and system rotation are investigated in the context of strong turbulence, i.e. accounting for the baroclinic instability. Although there exists a large literature in the rotating shear case (e.g. [6]) and the stratified shear case, with linear approaches,
Direct or Large Eddy Simulations, very few studies
consider the combined three distortions.
First, one has to define an admissible flow condition for
including all three effects, in order to be able to treat properly
the homogeneity condition in the numerical simulations.
Then, we solve numerically the complete nonlinear equations
for the rotating stratified shear homogeneous turbulent
flow, using a pseudo-spectral method. The most relevant
parameters for these Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS)
are chosen from a preliminary comprehensive parametric
study that includes two simplified approaches: (a) Rapid
Distortion Theory (RDT) with the related stability analysis technique; (b) a simplified "pressureless" stability analysis.