Turbulent mixing and transport in a thermally stratified interfacial layer in decaying grid turbulence

Abstract

A stably stratified mixing layer, sandwiched in between regions of neutral turbulence, was studied in decaying grid turbulence. The layer, which was shearless, was formed by heating the upper half of the flow by means of elements placed at the entrance to the plenum of a large, open circuit low speed wind tunnel 0.91×0.91 m2 in cross section and 9.14 m in length. The hot air above mixed with the cold below forming the stratified layer in between. As the flow evolved and the turbulence decayed, the buoyancy forces increased relative to the inertial forces (i.e., the Richardson number increased) causing the heat flux to collapse. This resulted in a thinning of the mixing layer with downstream distance (rather than growth which occurs for the passive case). Inside the layer the vertical velocity variance diminished and the vertical heat flux correlation coefficient was reduced to zero. Smoke wire photographs showed a wavylike damped region inside the layer, surrounded by the normal, more energetic turbulence outside. Second-order turbulence quantities scaled in the same way with the local Richardson number both along the layer and across it. The two stably stratified cases studied had centerline Froude numbers of 95 and 65 at 40 mesh lengths from the grid. The results are compared to a passive thermal mixing layer and are contrasted with recent experiments concerning a constant temperature gradient in grid turbulence.