de Vries, NB, Barker, AJ orcid.org/0000-0003-4397-7332 and Hollerbach, R orcid.org/0000-0001-8639-0967 (2023) The interactions of the elliptical instability and convection. Physics of Fluids, 35 (2). 024116. ISSN 1070-6631
Abstract
Elliptical instability is an instability of elliptical streamlines, which can be excited by large-scale tidal flows in rotating fluid bodies and excites inertial waves if the dimensionless tidal amplitude (ε) is sufficiently large. It operates in convection zones, but its interactions with turbulent convection have not been studied in this context. We perform an extensive suite of Cartesian hydrodynamical simulations in wide boxes to explore the interactions of elliptical instability and Rayleigh–Bénard convection. We find that geostrophic vortices generated by the elliptical instability dominate the flow, with energies far exceeding those of the inertial waves. Furthermore, we find that the elliptical instability can operate with convection, but it is suppressed for sufficiently strong convection, primarily by convectively driven large-scale vortices. We examine the flow in Fourier space, allowing us to determine the energetically dominant frequencies and wavenumbers. We find that power primarily concentrates in geostrophic vortices, in convectively unstable wavenumbers, and along the inertial wave dispersion relation, even in non-elliptically deformed convective flows. Examining linear growth rates on a convective background, we find that convective large-scale vortices suppress the elliptical instability in the same way as the geostrophic vortices created by the elliptical instability itself. Finally, convective motions act as an effective viscosity on large-scale tidal flows, providing a sustained energy transfer (scaling as ε2). Furthermore, we find that the energy transfer resulting from bursts of elliptical instability, when it operates, is consistent with the ε3 scaling found in prior work.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Mathematics (Leeds) > Applied Mathematics (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council) ST/S000275/1 STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council) ST/W000873/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 06 Mar 2023 10:20 |
Last Modified: | 16 Jun 2023 16:22 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Institute of Physics |
Identification Number: | 10.1063/5.0135932 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:196102 |
Download
Filename: The interactions of the elliptical instability and convection.pdf
Licence: CC-BY 4.0