Columnar eddy formation in freely decaying homogeneous rotating turbulence

Abstract

The roles of the Coriolis force and the convection associated with the fluid motion in the formation of columnar eddies in freely decaying homogeneous rotating turbulence at a moderate Rossby number are studied by direct numerical simulation of the Navier–Stokes equations in a periodic box. The simulated field is compared with a series of artificial fields generated by switching off the nonlinear and viscous terms in the Navier–Stokes equation at given instants. The comparison shows that, without the nonlinear convection effect, the Coriolis force cannot sustain the substantial growth in the direction parallel to the rotational axis of the length scale defined on the basis of the two-point correlation of the square of the vorticity, i.e. cannot sustain the formation of the columnar eddies. The length scale characterizes well the intuitive impression from visualization of flow obeying the dynamics with or without the nonlinear effect. It is shown that the lack of substantial growth is insensitive to the scale of the eddies, the box size and viscosity, at least in the case studied here.