Geometrical statistics of the vorticity vector and the strain rate tensor in rotating turbulence

Abstract

We report results on the geometrical statistics of the vorticity vector obtained from experiments in electromagnetically forced rotating turbulence. A range of rotation rates Ω is considered, from non-rotating to rapidly rotating turbulence with a maximum background rotation rate of Ω = 5 rad/s (with Rossby number much smaller than unity). Typically, the Taylor-scale Reynolds number in our experiments is around Reλ ≈ 100. The measurement volume is located in the centre of the fluid container above the bottom boundary layer, where the turbulent flow can be considered locally statistically isotropic and horizontally homogeneous for the non-rotating case, see L.J.A. van Bokhoven, H.J.H. Clercx, G.J.F. van Heijst, and R.R. Trieling, Experiments on rapidly rotating turbulent flows, Phys. Fluids 21 (2009) 096601. Based on the full set of velocity derivatives, measured in a Lagrangian way by three-dimensional (3D) particle tracking velocimetry, we have been able to quantify statistically the effect of system rotation on several flow properties. For the range of rotation rates considered, the experimental results show how the turbulence evolves from almost isotropic 3D turbulence (Ω ≲ 0.2 rad/s) to quasi-two-dimensional turbulence (Ω ≈ 5.0 rad/s), and how this is reflected by several statistical quantities. In particular, we have studied the orientation of the vorticity vector with respect to the three eigenvectors of the local strain rate tensor and with respect to the vortex stretching vector. Additionally, we have quantified the role of system rotation on the self-amplification terms of the enstrophy and strain rate equations and the direct contribution of the background rotation on these evolution equations. The main effect of background rotation is the strong reduction of extreme events and related (strong) reduction of the skewness of PDFs of several quantities, for example, the intermediate eigenvalue of the strain rate tensor and the enstrophy self-amplification term.