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Test of the anomalous scaling of passive temperature fluctuations in turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection with spatial inhomogeneity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2014

Xiaozhou He ,
Xiao-dong Shang  and
Penger Tong
Xiaozhou He
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Xiao-dong Shang
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510301, China
Penger Tong*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong
*
†Email address for correspondence: penger@ust.hk
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Abstract

The scaling properties of the temperature structure function (SF) and temperature–velocity cross-structure function (CSF) are investigated in turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection (RBC). The measured SFs and CSFs exhibit good scaling in space and time and the resulting SF and CSF exponents are obtained both at the centre of the convection cell and near the sidewall. A universal relationship between the CSF exponent and the thermal dissipation exponent is found, confirming that the anomalous scaling of passive temperature fluctuations in turbulent RBC is indeed caused by the spatial intermittency of the thermal dissipation field. It is also found that the difference in the functional form of the measured SF and CSF exponents at the two different locations in the cell is caused by the change of the geometry of the most dissipative structures in the (inhomogeneous) temperature field from being sheetlike at the cell centre to filament-like near the sidewall. The experiment thus provides direct evidence showing that the universality features of turbulent cascade are linked to the degree of anisotropy and inhomogeneity of turbulent statistics.

JFM classification

Turbulent Flows: Intermittency Turbulent Flows: Turbulent Flows
Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 753 , 25 August 2014 , pp. 104 - 130
Copyright
© 2014 Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

‡

Present address: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany.

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