Spatial Diffusivity Research Articles

Diffusion and clustering of sedimenting tracers in random hydrodynamic flows

The analysis presented in [1, 2] is extended to sedimenting low-inertia tracers advected by random divergence-free hydrodynamic flows. The key feature of the process is the clustering of the tracers due to the divergence of tracer-velocity field. This phenomenon has probability one; i.e., it takes place in almost every realization of the process. Both spatial diffusivity and diffusivity in the density space (responsible for clustering) are calculated. The low inertia of the tracers does not affect the spatial diffusivity. The indispensable use of a finite velocity correlation time leads to an anisotropic spatial diffusivity. The calculations performed in the study are based on a diffusion approximation.

Turbulent Decay and Mixing of Accelerated Inhomogeneous Flows Via a Feature Based Analysis

In this paper, we focus on the late time turbulence of an accelerated inhomogeneous flow environment, which is a generalization of the Richtmyer--Meshkov environment. The numerical investigation is based on two-dimensional (2D) compressible Euler simulation, which is initiated by a shock wave hitting a gas layer (curtain). Although our unforced study is based on the intrinsic numerical dissipation, we observe excellent agreement with the previous decay analysis on 2D viscous isotropic homogeneous turbulence at inertial range [J. R. Chasnov, Phys. Fluids, 9 (1997), pp. 171--180]. The baroclinic circulation in our environment plays a major role in the mass transport and mixing. The mass-transport induced density gradient intensification, in turn, enhances the circulation baroclinically and provides an intrinsic forcing at intermediate to high wave number range. With the assistance of a computer graphics based feature extraction and tracking algorithm, we address quantitatively the spatial and temporal diffusivity of the mixing zone. We study and compare both the slow/fast/slow and fast/slow/fast cases to illustrate heuristically the correlation of mass and momentum diffusivity.

Effects of pressure ridge sheltering on the spatial and temporal variability of boundary layer stability under first year sea ice

We present series of data describing the small-scale structure of the boundary layer stratification in the vicinity and away from a 1.5 m pressure ridge keel. We then analyze the influence of pressure ridges on the spatial and temporal variability of the ocean boundary layer. Our experiment was done during the melt in order to use small-scale salinity gradients to study the variability in intensity of mixing processes. High-resolution salinity records sampled at 0+, 25 and 50 cm from the ice-water interface were analyzed at two stations, one at 5 m and the other at 75 m from a pressure ridge keel. We observed that, in the immediate vicinity of the ridge, melting is associated with the periodic development and dissipation of a melt layer in relation with the orientation of tidal currents relative to the ridge. In contrast, away from the region under the sheltering influence of the ridge keel, the boundary layer did not show any evidence of stratification during the whole experiment. Data recorded in the vicinity of the ridge are then used to compute eddy diffusivity coefficients for sheltered and non-sheltered events. The observation of a stable melt layer in the vicinity of a ridge keel confirms that pressure ridges drastically modify the dynamics of vertical exchanges in their wake. Besides, our data show a significant spatial and temporal eddy diffusivity variability with a factor 10 between sheltered and non-sheltered areas. Thus, considering that ridges and rubble fields form a substantial fraction of ice-covered areas, our results suggest that effects in their wake may be important in the global budget of ocean-ice exchanges.

Sorption and transport of aqueous salt solution in polyurethane membrane at 25, 44, and 60°C

AbstractSorption and transport of aqueous salt solutions in polyurethane elastomer has been investigated over the temperature interval of 25–60°C by using an immersion/weight gain method. The size of the ions has no significant effect on the penetrant transport coefficients. The sorption data have been explained in terms of the simple Fickian model. Attempts have also been made to estimate the transport parameters by applying corrections to include the spatial diffusivity of the liquids within the polymer sample. Temperature dependence of the transport coefficients has been used to estimate the activation parameters from the Arrhenius plots.