Turbulence Approximation for Inhomogeneous Flows: Part II. The Numerical Simulation of a Penetrative Convection Experiment

Abstract

Abstract The quasi-normal theory modified by the clipping approximation is used to construct a numerical model of vertically inhomogeneous turbulence in a Boussinesq fluid. The pressure-correlation terms are expressed according to recently proposed formulations. With the aid of the horizontal homogeneity assumption the model is applied to the description of a laboratory experiment on penetrative convection and the numerical results are compared to the experimental data. It is found that the model does reproduce the measured vertical variations of mean temperature, turbulent beat flux, eddy kinetic energy and temperature variance, as well as a third-order correlation such as the vertical flux of eddy kinetic energy. The stationarity of the vertical profiles of various turbulent quantities, when scaled by the convective velocity and temperature, is also verified.