The dynamics of a meandering coastal jet in the lee of a cape

In a barotropic model of an oceanic channel, bounded to the north by a straight coast indented by a Gaussian cape, the evolution of a coastal jet is studied numerically. In the absence of the cape, the barotropic instability of the jet is determined. In the presence of the cape, a regular row of meanders develops downstream of this feature, and becomes stationary for a particular range of parameters. The relevant parameters are the velocity and width of the jet, size of the cape, and beta effect. The formation of meanders occurs first via the instability of the jet, then via the generation of vorticity anomalies at the cape, which are advected both downstream by the flow and offshore by the radiation of Rossby waves. Once the meanders are established, they remain stationary features if the propagation velocity of the meanders (due to the dipolar effect at the coast) opposes the jet velocity and the phase speed of the wave on the vorticity front. Finally, a steady state of a regular row of meanders is also obtained via a matrix method and is similar to that obtained in the time-dependent case.     

The Effect of Meridional and Vertical Shear on the Interaction of Equatorial Baroclinic and Barotropic Rossby Waves

Simplified asymptotic equations describing the resonant nonlinear interaction of equatorial Rossby waves with barotropic Rossby waves with significant midlatitude projection in the presence of arbitrary vertically and meridionally sheared zonal mean winds are developed. The three mode equations presented here are an extension of the two mode equations derived by Majda and Biello [ 1 ] and arise in the physically relevant regime produced by seasonal heating when the vertical (baroclinic) mean shear has both symmetric and antisymmetric components; the dynamics of the equatorial baroclinic and both symmetric and antisymmetric barotropic waves is developed. The equations described here are novel in several respects and involve a linear dispersive wave system coupled through quadratic nonlinearities. Numerical simulations are used to explore the effect of antisymmetric baroclinic shear on the exchange of energy between equatorial baroclinic and barotropic waves; the main effect of moderate antisymmetric winds is to shift the barotropic waves meridionally. A purely meridionally antisymmetric mean shear yields highly asymmetric waves which often propagate across the equator. The two mode equations appropriate to Ref. [ 1 ] are shown to have analytic solitary wave solutions and some representative examples with their velocity fields are presented.     

On the structure and growth rate of unstable modes to the Rossby‐Haurwitz wave

The normal mode instability study of a steady Rossby‐Haurwitz wave is considered both theoretically and numerically. This wave is exact solution of the nonlinear barotropic vorticity equation describing the dynamics of an ideal fluid on a rotating sphere, as well as the large‐scale barotropic dynamics of the atmosphere. In this connection, the stability of the Rossby‐Haurwitz wave is of considerable mathematical and meteorological interest. The structure of the spectrum of the linearized operator in case of an ideal fluid is studied. A conservation law for perturbations to the Rossby‐Haurwitz wave is obtained and used to get a necessary condition for its exponential instability. The maximum growth rate of unstable modes is estimated. The orthogonality of the amplitude of a non‐neutral or non‐stationary mode to the Rossby‐Haurwitz wave is shown in two different inner products. The analytical results obtained are used to test and discuss the accuracy of a numerical spectral method used for the normal mode stability study of arbitrary flow on a sphere. The comparison of the numerical and theoretical results shows that the numerical instability study method works well in case of such smooth solutions as the zonal flows and Rossby‐Haurwitz waves. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2005     

Homostrophic vortex interaction under external strain,in a coupled QG-SQG model

The interaction between two co-rotating vortices, embedded in a steady external strain field, is studied in a coupled Quasi-Geostrophic — Surface Quasi-Geostrophic (hereafter referred to as QG-SQG) model. One vortex is an anomaly of surface density, and the other is an anomaly of internal potential vorticity. The equilibria of singular point vortices and their stability are presented first. The number and form of the equilibria are determined as a function of two parameters: the external strain rate and the vertical separation between the vortices. A curve is determined analytically which separates the domain of existence of one saddle-point, and that of one neutral point and two saddle-points. Then, a Contour-Advective Semi-Lagrangian (hereafter referred to as CASL) numerical model of the coupled QG-SQG equations is used to simulate the time-evolution of a sphere of uniform potential vorticity, with radius R at depth −2H interacting with a disk of uniform density anomaly, with radius R, at the surface. In the absence of external strain, distant vortices co-rotate, while closer vortices align vertically, either completely or partially (depending on their initial distance). With strain, a fourth regime appears in which vortices are strongly elongated and drift away from their common center, irreversibly. An analysis of the vertical tilt and of the horizontal deformation of the internal vortex in the regimes of partial or complete alignment is used to quantify the three-dimensional deformation of the internal vortex in time. A similar analysis is performed to understand the deformation of the surface vortex.     

Periodic structures of oceanic Rossby wave under the influence of wind stress

A simple oceanic barotropic potential vorticity equation on β-plane with the influence of wind stress is applied to investigate the nonlinear Rossby wave in a shear flow. By the reductive perturbation method, we derived the rotational modified KdV (rmKdV for short) equation. And then with the help of Jacobi elliptic functions, we obtain various periodic structures for these equatorial Rossby waves. It is shown that the wind stress is very important for these periodic structures of rational form.     

Dissipative Euler Flows for Vortex Sheet Initial Data without Distinguished Sign

We construct infinitely many admissible weak solutions to the 2D incompressible Euler equations for vortex sheet initial data. Our initial datum has vorticity concentrated on a simple closed curve in a suitable Hölder space and the vorticity may not have a distinguished sign. Our solutions are obtained by means of convex integration; they are smooth outside a “turbulence” zone which grows linearly in time around the vortex sheet. As a by-product, this approach shows how the growth of the turbulence zone is controlled by the local energy inequality and measures the maximal initial dissipation rate in terms of the vortex sheet strength. © 2021 The Authors. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.     

Periodic structures of oceanic Rossby wave under the influence of wind stress

A simple oceanic barotropic potential vorticity equation on β-plane with the influence of wind stress is applied to investigate the nonlinear Rossby wave in a shear flow. By the reductive perturbation method, we derived the rotational modified KdV (rmKdV for short) equation. And then with the help of Jacobi elliptic functions, we obtain various periodic structures for these equatorial Rossby waves. It is shown that the wind stress is very important for these periodic structures of rational form.     

Dynamics of Two Point Vortices in an External Compressible Shear Flow

This paper is concerned with a system of equations that describes the motion of two point vortices in a flow possessing constant uniform vorticity and perturbed by an acoustic wave. The system is shown to have both regular and chaotic regimes of motion. In addition, simple and chaotic attractors are found in the system. Attention is given to bifurcations of fixed points of a Poincaré map which lead to the appearance of these regimes. It is shown that, in the case where the total vortex strength changes, the “reversible pitch-fork” bifurcation is a typical scenario of emergence of asymptotically stable fixed and periodic points. As a result of this bifurcation, a saddle point, a stable and an unstable point of the same period emerge from an elliptic point of some period. By constructing and analyzing charts of dynamical regimes and bifurcation diagrams we show that a cascade of period-doubling bifurcations is a typical scenario of transition to chaos in the system under consideration.     

Dipole and Multipole Flows with Point Vortices and Vortex Sheets

An exact method is presented for obtaining uniformly translating distributions of vorticity in a two-dimensional ideal fluid, or equivalently, stationary distributions in the presence of a uniform background flow. These distributions are generalizations of the well-known vortex dipole and consist of a collection of point vortices and an equal number of bounded vortex sheets. Both the vorticity density of the vortex sheets and the velocity field of the fluid are expressed in terms of a simple rational function in which the point vortex positions and strengths appear as parameters. The vortex sheets lie on heteroclinic streamlines of the flow. Dipoles and multipoles that move parallel to a straight fluid boundary are also obtained. By setting the translation velocity to zero, equilibrium configurations of point vortices and vortex sheets are found.     

Two-phase flow modelling of spilling and plunging breaking waves

A two-phase flow model, which solves the flow in the air and water simultaneously, has been employed to investigate both spilling and plunging breakers in the surf zone with a focus during wave breaking. The model is based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations with the k–?$k''–''?$ turbulence model. The governing equations are solved using the finite volume method, with the partial cell treatment being implemented in a staggered Cartesian grid to deal with complex geometries. The PISO algorithm is utilised for the pressure–velocity coupling and the air–water interface is modelled by the interface capturing method via a high-resolution volume of fluid scheme. Numerical results are compared with experimental measurements and other numerical studies in terms of water surface elevations, mean flow and turbulence intensity, in which satisfactory agreement is obtained. In addition, water surface profiles, velocity and vorticity fields during wave breaking are also presented and discussed. It is shown that the present model is capable of simulating the wave overturning, air entrainment and splash-up processes.     

The influence of turbulence on a columnar vortex with axial flow

The interaction between a columnar vortex and external turbulence is investigated numerically. A q -vortex is immersed in an initially isotropic homogeneous turbulence field, which itself is produced numerically by a direct numerical simulation of decaying turbulence. The formation of turbulent eddies around the columnar vortex and the vortex-core deformations are studied in detail by visualizing the flow field. In the less-stable case with q = –1.5, small thin spiral structures are formed inside the vortex core. In the unstable case with q = –0.45, the linear unstable modes grow until the columnar vortex make one turn. Its growth rate agrees with that of the linear analysis of Mayer and Powell[1]. After two turns of the vortex, the secondary instability is excited, which causes collapse of the columnar q -vortex and the sudden appearance of many fine scale vortices. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Trajectory statistics and turbulence evolution

The aim of this paper is to understand the tendency to organization of the turbulence in two-dimensional ideal fluids. A different perspective on vorticity separation and on the inverse cascade of energy yields from this study. Trajectory trapping or eddying appears to be strongly connected to these nonlinear processes. The statistics of the trajectories of the vorticity elements in a turbulent state is studied using a semi-analytic method. We show that the separation of the positive and negative vorticities is due to the attraction produced by a large scale vortex on the small scale vortices of the same sign. More precisely, a large scale velocity is shown to determine average transverse drifts, which have opposite orientations for positive and negative vorticity. They appear only in the presence of trapping and lead to energy flow to large scales due to the increase of the circulation of the large vortex. Recent results on drift turbulence evolution in magnetically confined plasmas are discussed in order to underline the idea that there is a link between the inverse cascade and trajectory trapping. The physical mechanisms are different in fluids and plasmas due to the different types of nonlinearities of the two systems, but trajectory trapping has the main role in both cases.     

Nonstationary wave turbulence

Summary Nonstationary regimes of the wave turbulence evolution are considered in the framework of isotropic kinetic equation. It is predicted analytically and confirmed by numerical experiment that there is a class of wave systems in which any initial distribution of the turbulence energy ink-space comes into a universal, Kolmogorovtype spectrum in a finite time. Before and after the formation of the Kolmogorov spectrum, two different self-similar regimes of evolution occur: the first one is responsible for explosively forming the universal spectrum and the second one determines energy dissipation.     

Nonlinear and linear instability of the Rossby-Haurwitz wave

As is known, the large-scale dynamics of barotropic atmosphere can approximately be described by the nonlinear barotropic vorticity equation. It is also well known that the Rossby-Haurwitz (RH) waves, being exact solutions to this equation, represent one of the main features of meteorological fields. Therefore the stability properties of the RH wave are of considerable interest for deeper understanding of the low-frequency variability of the atmosphere. Many works has been devoted to the barotropic instability of flows on a beta-plane and a sphere. However, mathematically, the nonlinear stability problem of the RH wave is still far from its complete solution. Indeed, some of the stability results have been obtained numerically, and hence, contain calculation errors. Severe truncation of perturbations used in the spectral stability analysis, though leads to interesting and useful conclusions, does not allow obtaining comprehensive results. The weak point of some analytical nonlinear instability studies consists in using inappropriate norms for perturbations. It should also be noted that a necessary condition for the linear instability of the RH wave was obtained only recently (Skiba, 2000). In the present work, the nonlinear stability of the RH wave in an ideal incompressible fluid on a rotating sphere is analytically studied. Let H(n) be a subspace of homogeneous spherical polynomials of degree n. Mathematically, a RH wave of degree n is the sum of a super-rotating flow of subspace H(1) and a homogeneous spherical polynomial of subspace H(n). First, we derive a conservation law for arbitrary RH-wave perturbations which asserts that any perturbation evolves in such a way that its kinetic energy E(t) and enstrophy q(t) decrease, remain constant or increase simultaneously. The law is used to divide all the perturbations into three invariant sets depending on the value of their mean spectral number k(t)=q(t)/E(t) introduced by Fjortoft (1953). These sets are denoted as M where k(t)¡n(n+1) (large-scale perturbations), N where k(t)¿n(n+1) (small-scale perturbations), and Z where k(t)=n(n+1) (boundary surface between the sets M and N). Note that Z includes one more invariant set, namely, the subspace H(n). The existence of invariant sets of perturbations allows us to study the RH wave instability in each set separately. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Numerical simulation of the interaction between vortex ring and bubble plume

In present paper a three-dimensional Vortex-In-Cell method with two-way coupling effect was developed to study the bubble plume entrainment by a vortex ring. In this method the continuous flow was calculated by the three-dimensional Vortex-In-Cell method and the bubbles are tracked through bubble motion equation. Two-way coupling effect between continuous flow and dispersed bubbles is considered by introducing a vorticity source term, which is induced by the change of void fraction gradient in each computational cell. After validated by the comparison between experimental measurements and simulation results for the motion of vortex rings and the rising velocity of bubble plume, present method is implemented to simulate the interaction between an evolving vortex ring and a rising bubble plume. It was found that there is little effect of the bubble entrainment to the total circulation of vortex ring while the effect of bubble entrainment to the vortex ring structure is quite obvious. The bubble entrainment by the vortex ring not only changed the vorticity distribution in the vortex structure, but also displaced the positions of the vortex cores. The vorticity in the lower vortex core of the vortex ring decreases more than that in the upper vortex core of the vortex ring while the vortex core in the upper part of the vortex ring is displaced to the center of vortex ring by the entrained bubbles. Smaller bubbles are easier to be entrained by the large scale vortex structure and the transportation distance is in inverse proportion to bubble diameter.     

Parametric instability of a many point-vortex system in a multi-layer flow under linear deformation

The paper deals with a dynamical system governing the motion of many point vortices located in different layers of a multi-layer flow under external deformation. The deformation consists of generally independent shear and rotational components. First, we examine the dynamics of the system’s vorticity center. We demonstrate that the vorticity center of such a multi-vortex multi-layer system behaves just like the one of two point vortices interacting in a homogeneous deformation flow. Given nonstationary shear and rotational components oscillating with different magnitudes, the vorticity center may experience parametric instability leading to its unbounded growth. However, we then show that one can shift to a moving reference frame with the origin coinciding with the position of the vorticity center. In this new reference frame, the new vorticity center always stays at the origin of coordinates, and the equations governing the vortex trajectories look exactly the same as if the vorticity center had never moved in the original reference frame. Second, we studied the relative motion of two point vortices located in different layers of a two-layer flow under linear deformation. We analyze their regular and chaotic dynamics identifying parameters resulting in effective and extensive destabilization of the vortex trajectories.     

On the Generation of Mean Flows by the Interaction of Görtler Vortices and Tollmien-Schlichting Waves in Curved Channel Flows

There are many fluid flows where the onset of transition can be caused by different instability mechanisms which compete in the nonlinear regime. Here the interaction of a centrifugal instability mechanism with the viscous mechanism which causes Tollmien-Schlichting waves is discussed. The interaction between these modes can be strong enough to drive the mean state; here the interaction is investigated in the context of curved channel flows so as to avoid difficulties associated with boundary layer growth. Essentially it is found that the mean state adjusts itself so that any modes present are neutrally stable even at finite amplitude. In the first instance the mean state driven by a vortex of short wavelength in the absence of a Tollmien-Schlichting wave is considered. It is shown that for a given channel curvature and vortex wavelength there is an upper limit to the mass flow rate which the channel can support as the pressure gradient is increased. When Tollmien-Schlichting waves are present then the nonlinear differential equation to determine the mean state is modified. At sufficiently high Tollmien-Schlichting amplitudes it is found that the vortex flows are destroyed, but there is a range of amplitudes where a fully nonlinear mixed vortex-wave state exists and indeed drives a mean state having little similarity with the flow which occurs without the instability modes. The vortex and Tollmien-Schlichting wave structure in the nonlinear regime has viscous wall layers and internal shear layers; the thickness of the internal layers is found to be a function of the Tollmien-Schlichting wave amplitude.     

On the Equation of Motion of a Thin Layer of Uniform Vorticity

A higher order extension to Moore's equation governing the evolution of a thin layer of uniform vorticity in two dimensions is obtained. The equation, in fact, governs the motion of the center line of the layer and is valid for consideration of motion whereby the layer thickness is uniformly small compared with the local radius of curvature of the center line. It extends Birkoff's equation for a vortex sheet. The equation is used to examine the growth of disturbances on a straight, steady layer of uniform vorticity. The growth rate for long waves is in good agreement with the exact result of Rayleigh, as required. Further, the growth of waves with length in a certain range is shown to be suppressed by making this approximate allowance for finite thickness. However, it is found that very short waves, which are quite outside the range of validity of the equation but which are likely to be excited in a numerical integration of the equation, are spuriously amplified as in the case of Moore's equation. Thus, numerical integration of the equation will require use of smoothing techniques to suppress this spurious growth of short wave disturbances.     

Convergence of the point vortex method for 2-D vortex sheet

We give an elementary proof of the convergence of the point vortex method (PVM) to a classical weak solution for the two-dimensional incompressible Euler equations with initial vorticity being a finite Radon measure of distinguished sign and the initial velocity of locally bounded energy. This includes the important example of vortex sheets, which exhibits the classical Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. A surprise fact is that although the velocity fields generated by the point vortex method do not have bounded local kinetic energy, the limiting velocity field is shown to have a bounded local kinetic energy.