Non-Gaussian buoyancy statistics in fingering convection
Fluid Dynamics
2015-05-18 v1 Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Abstract
We examine the statistics of active scalar fluctuations in high-Rayleigh number fingering convection with high-resolution three-dimensional numerical experiments. The one-point distribution of buoyancy fluctuations is found to present significantly non-Gaussian tails. A modified theory based on an original approach by Yakhot (1989) is used to model the active scalar distributions as a function of the conditional expectation values of scalar dissipation and fluxes in the flow. Simple models for these two quantities highlight the role of blob-like coherent structures for scalar statistics in fingering convection.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1002.1838,
title = {Non-Gaussian buoyancy statistics in fingering convection},
author = {Jost von Hardenberg and Francesco Paparella},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1002.1838},
year = {2015}
}