Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography



2008 Spring Seminar Series

"Turbulent Shear Flow and Langmuir Turbulence in Shallow Water: Large-Eddy Simulation"

Dr. Ying Xu
Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography

Monday, March 17, 2008
3:30 PM
Room 3200, Innovation Research Building I

Abstract

Langmuir circulations (LC) often occur in the wind and wave driven surface mixed layer of lakes and oceans and consist of arrays of counter-rotating vortices oriented approximately in the downwind direction. Langmuir circulation is now regarded as one of several turbulent processes that operates in the upper boundary layers of oceans and lakes. It complements, interacts with, and often dominates other turbulent processes which transport momentum, heat and mass transfer or drive dispersion in the upper ocean. The model for the generation of LC consists of a vortex force, called Craik-Leibovich force, in the momentum equations modeling the interaction between the Stokes drift and the vertical shear of the current. We implement a large-eddy simulation (LES) to model the pressure-driven turbulent flow and wind-driven turbulent shear flow in shallow water. Comparisons between the different flows rely on visualizations and diagnostics including profiles of mean velocity, profiles of resolved Reynolds stress components, autocorrelations, invariants of the resolved Reynolds stress anisotropy tensor, balances of the transport equations for mean resolved turbulent kinetic energy, and resolved Reynolds stress.

Biography

Dr. Xu joined CCPO in November 2006 to begin work as a postdoctoral research scientist with Dr. Chester Grosch. She received her M.A. degree in Mathematics in 2005 and her Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kentucky in 2006. While she was at the University of Kentucky, her major work was to build a model to simulate various phase-change problems in turbulent flows. Currently, Dr. Xu’s research interest is focused on large-eddy simulation of free-surface turbulent flows in shallow water, especially Langmuir circulations in a wind-driven shear current and/or a tidal current.

Reception before seminar at 3:00 PM


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