Eulerian and Lagrangian studies in surface flow turbulence

Abstract

Experimental and numerical studies of turbulent fluid motion in a free surface are presented. The flow is realized experimentally on the surface of a tank filled with water stirred well below the surface. Numerically, it is modelled by free-slip boundary conditions. The surface flow is unconventional: it is not incompressible and neither kinetic energy nor enstrophy is conserved in the limit of zero fluid viscosity and in the absence of external driving as is the case for incompressible two-dimensional turbulent flows. The dynamics of passive Lagrangian tracers that are advected in such flows are dominated by rapidly changing patches of the surface flow divergence. Owing to compressibility, particles form clusters within multifractal mass distributions. Also studied is the motion of pairs and triplets of particles. The mean square separation shows an extended range with a reduced scaling exponent in comparison with the classical Richardson value. Clustering is also manifest in strongly deformed triangles spanned within triplets of tracers.