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Turbulent cascading in Buoyant plumes

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Abstract

This study presents discoveries on the spectral trends of energy cascading in turbulent buoyant plumes. A high-resolution large eddy simulation was used to simulate thermal and buoyant gas plumes. Turbulent plumes have positive helicity throughout the spatial development process. The helicity and turbulent kinetic energy spectra reveal consistent trends and demonstrate a deviation from the classical Kolmogorov’s inertial spectra at high wave numbers. Additional insight into turbulence physics has been confirmed in this study: the forward cascading of energy exists only at higher wavenumbers, whereas the flux of energy and helicity flows from smaller to large-scale structures at the lower wavenumbers.

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Data Availability

The data which support this investigation are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) for computational resources and NASA for financial support. The authors acknowledge the graduate students in the Laboratory of Turbulence and Sensing at the University of Texas, San Antonio who have helped with the generation of the LES data and for developing python tool for post-processing the LES data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, USA

    Chang Hsin Chen & Kiran Bhaganagar

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA

    Chang Hsin Chen

Authors
  1. Chang Hsin Chen
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  2. Kiran Bhaganagar
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Correspondence to Kiran Bhaganagar.

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Chen, C.H., Bhaganagar, K. Turbulent cascading in Buoyant plumes. Environ Fluid Mech (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10652-023-09963-9

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