Laboratory Experiments on Convective Entrainment Using a Saline Water Tank

Entrainment fluxes in a shear-free convective boundary layer have been measured with a saline water tank set-up. The experiments were targeted towards measuring the entrainment behaviour for medium to high Richardson numbers and use a two-layer design, i.e. two stacked non-stratified (neutral) layer...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Jonker, Harm J.J., Jiménez Cortés, Maria Antònia
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Recursos:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/116023
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/116023
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Convective boundary layer
Entrainment
Laboratory experiments
Descrição
Resumo:Entrainment fluxes in a shear-free convective boundary layer have been measured with a saline water tank set-up. The experiments were targeted towards measuring the entrainment behaviour for medium to high Richardson numbers and use a two-layer design, i.e. two stacked non-stratified (neutral) layers with different densities. With laser induced fluorescence (LIF), the entrainment flux of a fluorescent dye is measured for bulk Richardson numbers in the range 30-260. It is proposed that a carefully chosen combination of top-down and bottom-up processes improves the accuracy of LIF-based entrainment observations. The observed entrainment fluxes are about an order of magnitude lower than reported for thermal water tanks: the derived buoyancy entrainment ratio, A, is found to be A ≈ 0.02, which is to be compared with A ≈ 0.25 for a thermal convection tank (Deardorff et al., J Fluid Mech 100:41-64, 1980). An extensive discussion is devoted to the influence of the Reynolds and Prandtl numbers in laboratory experiments on entrainment. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.