_div_classtitleRegeneration_of_turbulent_fluctuations_in_low-Froude-number_flow_over_a_sphere_at_a_Reynolds_number_of_3700__div_

J. Fluid Mech. (2016), vol. 804, R2, doi:10.1017/jfm.2016.
526
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Regeneration of turbulent fluctuations in

low-Froude-number flow over a sphere at a
Reynolds number of 3700
Anikesh Pal1 , Sutanu Sarkar1, †, Antonio Posa2 and Elias Balaras2

1 Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California San Diego,
CA 92093, USA
2 Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The George Washington University,
DC 20052, USA
(Received 10 May 2016; revised 27 June 2016; accepted 8 August 2016;

first published online 8 September 2016)
Direct numerical simulations (DNS) are performed to study the behaviour of flow
past a sphere in the regime of high stratification (low Froude number Fr). In contrast
to previous results at lower Reynolds numbers, which suggest monotone suppression
of turbulence with increasing stratification in flow past a sphere, it is found that,
below a critical Fr, increasing the stratification induces unsteady vortical motion and
turbulent fluctuations in the near wake. The near wake is quantified by computing the
energy spectra, the turbulence energy equation, the partition of energy into horizontal
and vertical components, and the buoyancy Reynolds number. These diagnostics show
that the stabilizing effect of buoyancy changes flow over the sphere to flow around
the sphere. This qualitative change in the flow leads to a new regime of unsteady
vortex shedding in the horizontal planes and intensified horizontal shear which result
in turbulence regeneration.
Key words: stratified turbulence, turbulent flows, wakes/jets
1. Introduction
Wakes of bluff bodies in a density-stratified environment are common, e.g. marine
swimmers, underwater submersibles and flows over mountains and around islands.
Buoyancy qualitatively changes the far wake, leading to longer lifetime, anisotropic
https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2016.526
suppression of turbulence and quasi-two-dimensional coherent vortices (Lin & Pao

1979; Spedding 2014). Recent numerical and experimental studies of the benchmark
problem of flow past a sphere in a uniformly stratified fluid mostly consider a Froude
number Fr > O(1), where Fr = U/ND is based on the body velocity U, body diameter
† Email address for correspondence: sarkar@ucsd.edu

c Cambridge University Press 2016 804 R2-1
A. Pal, S. Sarkar, A. Posa and E. Balaras
D and buoyancy frequency N. Strong stratification, e.g. the upper ocean pycnocline,
can lead to Fr 6 O(1) considered here. Unlike previous low-Fr studies of flow past
a sphere, the present Reynolds number of Re = UD/ν = 3700 (ν is the kinematic
viscosity) is not small.
The first numerical simulations of the low-Fr case over a sphere (Hanazaki 1988)
were at Re = 200 (laminar flow). It was found that the flow tends to flow around
in the horizontal rather than going over the sphere if Fr < 0.5 and eventually
approaches two-dimensionality for Fr < 0.2. Later experiments (Lin et al. 1992;
Chomaz, Bonneton & Hopfinger 1993) covered a wide range of Fr and Re, but the
low-Fr cases had low Re as well. The near wake was classified into four regimes
(Chomaz et al. 1993) depending on the Froude number, including the quasi-2D
regime which occurred for the lowest examined values of Fr ∈ {0.125, 0.4}. A recent
direct numerical simulation (DNS) (Orr et al. 2015) included Fr < 1 cases but at low
Re = 200. None of these prior studies report turbulence in the low-Fr regime. It has
been suggested (Chomaz et al. 1993) that the effect of Re is weak when Fr < 0.35
as long as Re exceeds 100. On the other hand, quasi-2D motion in strongly stratified
flow can be turbulent when the Reynolds number is large, as found for Taylor–Green
vortices (Riley & deBruynKops 2003), homogeneous turbulence (Lindborg 2006;
Brethouwer et al. 2007) and a far wake (Diamessis, Spedding & Domaradzki 2011).
The non-equilibrium region of the far wake is also lengthened for large Re (Brucker
& Sarkar 2010).
2. Problem formulation, numerical details and validation

Motivated by the unanswered question regarding near-wake turbulence when Fr is
low but Re is not, we use DNS to investigate the flow past a sphere at Re = 3700
and Fr ∈ {0.025, 1}. The three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations are solved in a
cylindrical coordinate system on a staggered grid using an immersed boundary method
(IBM) (Balaras 2004; Yang & Balaras 2006) for representing the sphere.
The simulation parameters, domain size and grid distribution for the different cases
are given in table 1. High resolution is used at the sphere surface (20 points across
the boundary layer thickness at the point of maximum wall shear stress) and in the
wake. The radial grid spacing is 1r ' 0.0016 in the cylindrical region (r < 0.65)
that encloses the sphere, the azimuthal direction has 128 points, and 1x ' 0.0016
near the surface. The grid has mild stretching, radially and streamwise, away from
the body. The IBM results and the grid resolution to resolve the flow have been
successfully validated in the unstratified case against both previous simulations and
laboratory experiments. Figure 1(a,b) shows that the variations of the surface pressure
coefficient, Cp , and the surface shear stress, (τ /ρU 2 )Re0.5 (τ is the shear stress and
ρ is the reference density), as a function of the azimuthal angle, match well with
results in the available literature. Table 2 shows that key characteristics of the near-
body flow such as the Strouhal number (St) of the dominant shedding frequency, the
separation angle (ϕs ), the coefficient of drag (Cd ) and the pressure coefficient (Cpb ) at
the rearward stagnation point also match with previously reported values.
3. Results and discussion

Figure 2 shows the downstream evolution of the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE)
integrated over cross-stream (x2 –x3 ) planes for cases with different Fr. It should
be noted that x3 denotes the vertical coordinate, the horizontal directions are x1
(streamwise) and x2 (lateral), and the sphere centre is at the origin. All statistics are
804 R2-2
Regeneration of turbulent fluctuations in flow over a sphere
(a) 1.2 (b)

Present Present
1.0 2.0
Rodriguez et al. (2011) Rodriguez et al.
0.8 (2011)
Kim & Durbin (1988)
0.6 1.5 Seidl et al. (1997)
0.4
0.2 1.0
0
0.5
–0.2
–0.4 0
–0.6
0 30 60 90 120 150 180 0 30 60 90 120 150 180
F IGURE 1. Validation of the unstratified wake: (a) pressure coefficient, Cp , (b) normalized
drag coefficient, (τ /ρU 2 )Re0.5 . Here, θ is the azimuthal angle, with θ = 0 corresponding
to the forward stagnation point.
Case Re Fr Lr Lθ Lz Nr Nθ Nz
1 3700 0.025 58 2π 63 (40 upstream; 23 downstream) 690 128 3072
9 3700 1 58 2π 103 (25 upstream; 80 downstream) 690 128 4608
10 3700 ∞ 16 2π 95 (13 upstream; 80 downstream) 630 128 4608
TABLE 1. Simulation parameters. The sphere is located at (0, 0, 0). The substantial domain
size in the radial and upstream directions, along with the sponge region, eliminates the
spurious reflection of internal waves.
computed after the initial transient by time averaging over an interval of 1.5Lx /U
which is sufficient to obtain converged statistics. Buoyancy in a stratified wake has
been found to suppress turbulence in previous studies, and, accordingly, the TKE
decreases when Fr decreases from 1 to 0.8 to 0.5. However, the trend reverses when
Fr decreases to 0.25 and beyond: the TKE increases with decreasing Fr. The value
of the TKE in the Fr = 0.25 case increases to a level comparable to the Fr = 0.8
case, and a further decrease of Fr to 0.21 leads to values of the TKE larger than
in the unstratified case. Subsequent reduction in Fr beyond 0.21 leads to progressive
augmentation of the TKE.
To understand the remarkable regeneration of fluctuations in the near wake at low
Fr, contour plots of the azimuthal vorticity magnitude in the horizontal (x1 –x2 ) and
vertical (x1 –x3 ) planes (figure 3) are examined. The near-wake dynamics changes
qualitatively for cases with Fr 6 0.25, as elaborated below. The Fr = 1 wake
displays the anisotropy of a moderate-Fr wake: a large spread in the horizontal plane
(figure 3a) and small-scale structures associated with the shear layer instability, while,
in the vertical plane, the separated boundary layers (figure 3b) contract, followed by
an undulation of the wake. At Fr = 0.5 (not shown here), the recirculation bubble
804 R2-3
0.35
0.30
0.25
0.20
TKE
0.15
0.10
0.05
0
0.5 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0
F IGURE 2. Evolution of integrated TKE in the streamwise direction. The plotted quantity
is the area-integrated TKE normalized using U and D.
Case Re St ϕs (deg.) Cd Cpb

Present DNS (unstratified case) 3700 0.210 91.7 0.3938 −0.215
Schlichting (1979) (exp.) 3700 0.39
Kim & Durbin (1988) (exp.) 3700 0.225 −0.224
Sakamoto & Haniu (1990) (exp.) 3700 0.204
Seidl, Muzaferija & Perić (1997) (DNS) 5000 89.5 0.38
Tomboulides & Orszag (2000) (DNS) 1000 0.195 102
Constantinescu & Squires (2003) (LES) 104 0.195 85–86 0.393
Yun, Kim & Choi (2006) (LES) 3700 0.21 90 0.355 −0.194
Rodriguez et al. (2011) (DNS) 3700 0.215 89.4 0.394 −0.207
TABLE 2. Comparison of the different statistical flow features of the near-body flow in
the present DNS with experimental measurements and numerical results available in the
literature. Here, LES stands for large-eddy simulation, St = fD/U is the non-dimensional
vortex shedding frequency, ϕs is the azimuthal separation angle, Cd is the drag coefficient
and Cpb is the rearward pressure coefficient at ϕ = π.
is steady, the disintegration of the shear layer is suppressed in the horizontal plane
and the separating shear layers dip to the centreline in the vertical plane. The shear
layer formed by the separating boundary layer exhibits large steady waviness in the
vertical plane, there is little unsteadiness in the near wake and, therefore, the TKE
for Fr = 0.5 is insignificant, as was shown in figure 2. A quasisteady recirculation
bubble attached to the sphere is found in the horizontal plane (figure 3c) for a larger
stratification, Fr = 0.25. At the end of the recirculation zone, the wake undergoes
an unsteady undulation with the shedding of vortices further downstream. The shear
layer in the vertical direction (figure 3d) manifests waviness (induced by lee waves),
but the instability does not break down into turbulence. The flow between the upper
and lower shear layers displays thin strips of enhanced vorticity symptomatic of
vorticity layering.
804 R2-4
(a) (b)
1.0 1.0
0.5 0.5
0 0
–0.5 –0.5
–1.0 –1.0 01234 5
01234 5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
(c) (d)
1.0 1.0
0.5 0.5
0 0
–0.5 –0.5
–1.0 –1.0
01234 5 01234 5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
(e) ( f) KH Billows
1.0 1.0
0.5 0.5
0 0
–0.5 –0.5
–1.0 –1.0
012345 01234 5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
(g) 1.0 (h) 1.0

0.5 0.5
0 0
–0.5 –0.5
–1.0 –1.0
01234 5 01234 5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
F IGURE 3. Instantaneous azimuthal vorticity magnitude on the horizontal x1 –x2 centre

plane (x3 = 0) and the vertical x1 –x3 centre plane (x2 = 0). Snapshots compared among
cases with different Fr. The plotted vorticity is normalized using U and D.
The flow organization changes significantly with further decrease in Fr to 0.125

and beyond. There is unsteady motion of the shear layers in the horizontal plane
accompanied by patches of small-scale turbulence (figure 3e) as compared with the
steady recirculation bubble in the Fr = 0.25 wake. This reappearance of small-scale
fluctuations at Fr = 0.125 occurs due to unsteady vortex shedding in the horizontal
plane, which results in both flapping and destabilization of the shear layer. A similar
vertical layering of vorticity to that at Fr = 0.25 is also seen at Fr = 0.125 but, in
this case, the layers roll up intermittently to form Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) billows
(figure 3f ) which then break down into finer-scale fluctuations. A secondary instability
of pancake vortices in the far wake to form KH rolls was noted in previous temporal
simulations (Diamessis et al. 2011) for sufficiently high Re. In the present near wake,
the perturbations provided by the horizontal flapping motion and the value of the local
Re are sufficient to destabilize the vertically layered vorticity into KH billows. As
Fr approaches 0.025, the unsteady vortex shedding from the sphere in the horizontal
plane becomes more noticeable. The TKE in the region x/D < 1 which belongs to the
very near wake is also the largest among all simulated cases, as was shown in figure 2.
804 R2-5
(a) (b)
10 7 10–1
10 6
10 5 10–2
10 4
10 3
10–3
10 2
101
100 10–4
5 10 15 20 0.5 20
F IGURE 4. Evolution of (a) the ratio of area-integrated horizontal and vertical MKEs
and (b) the components of the integrated TKE, in the streamwise direction. The area
integration is over the x2 , x3 plane normal to the streamwise direction.
In the horizontal plane (figure 3g), there are coherent vortices with interspersed threads
of rolled-up vorticity. In the vertical plane (figure 3h), layered vortical structures are
seen but do not manifest KH billows. The fact that KH billows are absent in the
Fr = 0.025 case will be explained, based on the value of the buoyancy Reynolds
number and the scaling analysis of Riley & deBruynKops (2003) and Brethouwer
et al. (2007), later in the paper. The vorticity pattern at Fr = 0.025 appears to have
less fine-scale activity relative to Fr = 0.125. Internal gravity waves at the body can
be seen in the vertical plane (figure 3d,f,h), but their discussion is deferred to future
work.
Both the mean and the turbulent kinetic energy are increasingly dominated by
horizontal motions as Fr decreases to 0.25 and below. The evolution of the ratio
of the area-integrated mean kinetic energies (MKEs) of the horizontal component
(MKE11 + MKE22 ) and the vertical component (MKE33 ) is shown in figure 4(a). For
Fr = 1, the horizontal MKE is larger near the sphere, but, beyond x1 /D ≈ 5, the
MKE becomes similarly distributed among the horizontal and vertical components.
The undulations after x1 /D ≈ 5 signify the exchange of MKE between the horizontal
and vertical components. The ratio (MKE11 + MKE22 )/MKE33 for Fr = 0.25 and
0.125 characterizes the transition of the near wake into quasihorizontal motion. The
case with Fr = 0.025 exhibits the complete dominance of horizontal motion, present
primarily in the form of layered coherent vortices that span a wide lateral (x2 )
extent. The streamwise variation of the components of the TKE for Fr = 1 and 0.125
is presented in figure 4(b). The components of the TKE for Fr = 1 evolve in a
similar manner, whereas for Fr = 0.25 (not shown here) the streamwise (TKE11 ) and
spanwise (TKE22 ) components are larger relative to the vertical (TKE33 ) component. A
significant difference between the horizontal (TKE11 , TKE22 ) and vertical components
is observed as Fr is further decreased to 0.125 (shown here) and 0.025 (not shown
here).
Temporal spectra are examined to quantify buoyancy effects on the frequency

content of the lateral velocity, v. Figure 5(a) shows that there is a significant decrease
of energy at all frequencies when the stratification increases to change Fr from 1 to
0.25. However, a further decrease of Fr to 0.125 and 0.025 shows a re-energization
of fluctuations at all frequencies. There is a strong low-frequency peak in these cases:
(i) St = ωD/U = 0.163 for Fr = 0.125, (ii) St = 0.200 for Fr = 0.025. Secondary
804 R2-6
(a) 100 (b)

10–2
10–1
10–3
10–2
10–3 10–4
10–4 10–5
10–5 10–6
10–6
10–7
10–7
10–8
10–8
10–9 10–9
10–1 100 101 10–1 100 101

St St
F IGURE 5. Energy spectra of (a) lateral v fluctuations and (b) vertical w fluctuations at
a downstream point (x1 = 1.6, x2 = 0.51, x3 = 0) in the horizontal centre plane at various
Froude numbers. Here, Evv , Eww and the Strouhal number, St, are non-dimensional values
based on U and D.
peaks of Evv at harmonics of the low-frequency mode are also evident. There is
substantial energy, much larger than at Fr = 0.25, at the intermediate frequencies as
well. It should be noticed that for flow over a circular cylinder in an unstratified
environment at Re = 3900, the shedding frequency is found to be ≈0.2 (Parnaudeau
et al. 2008). Therefore, with increasing stratification, the vortex shedding of a sphere
shifts towards that of a circular cylinder. This is because the flow at depths larger
than O(U/N) with respect to the top of the sphere tends to divert around the sphere
rather than over the sphere because of the potential energy barrier. We emphasize
that the low-Fr near wake, apart from the similarity of vortex shedding, is quite
different from the unstratified cylinder wake, where the strong inhibition of vertical
fluctuations by buoyancy is absent. For example, the vertical velocity spectra Eww
(figure 5b) at Fr = 0.125 and Fr = 0.025 have much smaller amplitudes relative to
their corresponding horizontal counterparts, Evv , and also have smaller amplitudes
with respect to Eww for the Fr = 1 case.
The mean velocity profiles change significantly with decreasing Fr because of the
preferential flow around the sphere rather than over it. Thus, the profile of the mean
streamwise velocity (figure 6a) along the lateral line (x1 = x3 = 0, x2 > 0.5) shows
enhanced horizontal shear in the vicinity of the sphere boundary at x2 = 0.5 for the
lower-Fr cases in comparison with Fr = 1. At x1 = 1 (figure 6b), the shear is confined
within a narrow band of 0.5 < x2 < 0.8 for Fr = 1, whereas Fr = 0.25, 0.125 and
0.025 show progressively broader regions of shear. The lateral horizontal motion of the
fluid near the sphere is also enhanced, as shown by the profile of the lateral velocity
U2,mean (x2 ) on the line (x1 = x3 = 0, x2 > 0.5) in figure 6(c). At x1 = 1, the variation
of U2,mean as a function of x2 (figure 6d) is substantial for Fr = 0.25, 0.125 and 0.025
and has a complex shape because of the three-dimensional mean flow near the body.
The production of TKE is given by P = −u0i u0j ∂ Ūi /∂xj , with the overbar denoting a
mean value. The various components Pα,β that comprise P change in the near wake
(x/D < 5) because of the buoyancy effect. Figure 7 shows the downstream evolution
of the components Pα,β integrated over the cross-stream x2 –x3 plane. The integrated
production for the Fr = 1 wake is primarily dominated by the components (P13 , P31 )
involving vertical fluctuations u03 , with some contributions from the components
(P12 , P22 ) involving horizontal fluctuations u02 , as shown in figure 7(a). This scenario
804 R2-7
(a) 2.5 (b) 2.5 (c) 2.5 (d ) 2.5
2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0
1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
1
0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
0.25
0.125
0.025
0 0
0 0.5 1.0 1.5 –0.5 0 0.5 1.0 1.5 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 –0.4 –0.2 0 0.2
F IGURE 6. Streamwise (U1,mean ) and lateral (U2,mean ) mean velocity profiles are plotted as
a function of the lateral coordinate x2 at two streamwise locations (x1 /D = 0, 1) in the
horizontal central plane, x3 = 0. The plotted velocity has been normalized with U and the
x2 coordinate with D.
(a) (b) 0.03

0.06
0.02
0.04
0.01
0.02
0
0
0.5 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0 0.5 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0
(c) (d)
0.15
0.10
0.10
0.05 0.05
0
0
–0.05
0.5 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0 0.5 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0
F IGURE 7. Shear production components for different Fr cases, integrated over x2 –x3
planes. The plotted production components have been normalized with U and D.
changes when the stratification increases. As illustrated in figure 7(b) for Fr = 0.25,
the components P13 and especially P31 are suppressed with respect to Fr = 1, and
by Fr = 0.025 (figure 7d), both become negligible as the buoyancy effect strengthens
804 R2-8
to make u03 negligible. However, P12 and P22 associated with horizontal fluctuations
increase when Fr is reduced to 0.125 from 0.25. The large lateral (x2 ) gradients
of mean U1 (figure 6b) and mean U2 (figure 6d) enhance P12 and P22 respectively,
making them the leading production terms for Fr = 0.125 and 0.025.
The buoyancy Reynolds number, Reb = ε/νN 2 , where ε is the turbulent dissipation
rate and N is the background buoyancy frequency, is an often-used parameter to
distinguish the turbulent nature of fluctuations in stratified flow. A similar parameter
that distinguishes turbulence is R = ReFrh2 , where Frh = u/lh N (lh is the length
scale and u is the velocity scale of horizontal fluctuations) is the horizontal Froude
number and Re = ulh /ν. The choice of lh = u3 /ε makes R identical to Reb . Riley
& deBruynKops (2003) estimated the Richardson number of layered motions in
strongly stratified flow by Ri ' 1/R , and proposed that layer instability was possible
if Ri . 1 or, equivalently, R & 1. Brethouwer et al. (2007) concluded that if R 1,
an energy cascade from large to small scales is possible, allowing an inertial range in
horizontal energy spectra. In contrast, for R 1, the dissipation ε is associated with
quasi-two-dimensional scales. Arobone & Sarkar (2010), in their DNS of a stratified
fluid with horizontal shear, found a network of quasi-2D vortices with interspersed
dislocations that were laminar for small Reb but exhibited secondary instability for
larger Reb .
We find that the values of Reb (figure 8) provide guidance to the observed
differences in the state of fluctuating motion at different Fr. The Fr = 1 case has
Reb values between 10–100 at 0.54 < x1 /D < 5.5, signifying broadband turbulence, as
observed from the energy content at high frequencies in the horizontal and vertical
energy spectra (figure 5a,b). For the lower Fr of 0.25, the streamwise locations
0.5 < x1 /D < 3 have 0.1 < Reb < 1. At these streamwise locations, the vortices are
still attached, as shown in figure 3(c), and no small-scale features are present. Some
of the small scales observed in the Fr = 0.25 case (figure 3c) at x1 /D = 4–5 are
consistent with Reb & 1 in this region. The small scales observed in figure 3(e) are
consistent with the O(1) values of Reb for Fr = 0.125 at locations 1.14 < x1 /D < 2.75,
where Reb < 1 and the flow transitions towards quasi-2D dissipation. For Fr = 0.025,
Reb 1 at all x1 /D locations. There is vertical shear between pancake eddies,
as shown in figure 3( f,h), which is quasi-laminar for small Reb , consistent with
Brethouwer et al. (2007). Nevertheless, the flow is far from laminar. The horizontal
motion is unsteady due to vortex shedding, there is broadband turbulence in the near
wake, as shown by velocity spectra, and there are small scales, e.g. thin braid vortices
between the vortices being shed from the sphere (figure 3g) in the vorticity field.
From figure 8, it can be seen that for Fr = 0.25 and 0.125, the value of Ri ≈
1/Reb is .1 and, therefore, secondary KH instabilities are present in the vertical layers
(figure 3d,f ). However, for Fr = 0.125 at x1 /D > 5, the value of Ri > 1, and for
Fr = 0.025, the value of Ri 1 at all x1 /D locations. Hence, secondary instability is
absent in the vertical layers at the x1 /D ≈ 5 location in figure 3( f ) and at all locations
in figure 3(h).
4. Conclusions
To summarize, although turbulence decreases and is almost extinguished when

stratification increases and Fr decreases to 0.5, it is regenerated when Fr decreases
further to 0.25 and beyond at Re = 3700. This new finding is contrary to the belief
that turbulence suppression is monotone with increasing stratification for flow past
a sphere, which was based on experiments at low Re. Owing to the suppression
804 R2-9
10 2
101
100
10–1
10–2
10–3
0.5 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0
F IGURE 8. Variation of the buoyancy Reynolds number Reb = ε/(νN 2 ) for different Fr
at the centre line x2 = 0, x3 = 0 in the streamwise direction x1 .
of vertical motion, the fluid moves horizontally around the sphere. This leads to a
new regime of unsteady vortex shedding with frequency similar to that for a circular
cylinder, there is a transition to broadband turbulence if Re is sufficiently large, and
the enhanced shear of the horizontal motion feeds energy into the fluctuation energy.
The buoyancy Reynolds number is Reb = O(1) at locations in the low-Fr wake where
quasi-2D vortices are accompanied by small-scale features in vertical layers between
these vortices. Future simulations of flow past a sphere at higher Re are desirable to
explore the low-Fr dynamics of the near wake at higher Reb .
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the support of ONR grant no. N00014-15-1-2718

administered by Dr R. Joslin. Computational resources were provided by the
Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program.
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J. Fluid Mech. (2016), vol. 804, R2, doi:10.1017/jfm.2016.

Regeneration of turbulent fluctuations in

Anikesh Pal1 , Sutanu Sarkar1, †, Antonio Posa2 and Elias Balaras2

(Received 10 May 2016; revised 27 June 2016; accepted 8 August 2016;

Key words: stratified turbulence, turbulent flows, wakes/jets

suppression of turbulence and quasi-two-dimensional coherent vortices (Lin & Pao

† Email address for correspondence: sarkar@ucsd.edu

2. Problem formulation, numerical details and validation

3. Results and discussion

(a) 1.2 (b)

Case Re St ϕs (deg.) Cd Cpb

(g) 1.0 (h) 1.0

F IGURE 3. Instantaneous azimuthal vorticity magnitude on the horizontal x1 –x2 centre

The flow organization changes significantly with further decrease in Fr to 0.125

Temporal spectra are examined to quantify buoyancy effects on the frequency

(a) 100 (b)

10–1 100 101 10–1 100 101

(a) 2.5 (b) 2.5 (c) 2.5 (d ) 2.5

2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0

1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5

1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0

(a) (b) 0.03

To summarize, although turbulence decreases and is almost extinguished when

We gratefully acknowledge the support of ONR grant no. N00014-15-1-2718

simulation of strongly stratified turbulent flows. J. Fluid Mech. 585, 343–368.

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_div_class__title__Regeneration_of_turbulent_fluctuations_in_low-Froude-number_flow_over_a_sphere_at_a_Reynolds_number_of_3700__div_

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_div_class__title__Regeneration_of_turbulent_fluctuations_in_low-Froude-number_flow_over_a_sphere_at_a_Reynolds_number_of_3700__div_

Uploaded by

J. Fluid Mech. (2016), vol. 804, R2, doi:10.1017/jfm.2016.

Regeneration of turbulent fluctuations in

Anikesh Pal1 , Sutanu Sarkar1, †, Antonio Posa2 and Elias Balaras2

(Received 10 May 2016; revised 27 June 2016; accepted 8 August 2016;

Key words: stratified turbulence, turbulent flows, wakes/jets

suppression of turbulence and quasi-two-dimensional coherent vortices (Lin & Pao

† Email address for correspondence: sarkar@ucsd.edu

2. Problem formulation, numerical details and validation

3. Results and discussion

(a) 1.2 (b)

Case Re St ϕs (deg.) Cd Cpb

(g) 1.0 (h) 1.0

F IGURE 3. Instantaneous azimuthal vorticity magnitude on the horizontal x1 –x2 centre

The flow organization changes significantly with further decrease in Fr to 0.125

Temporal spectra are examined to quantify buoyancy effects on the frequency

(a) 100 (b)

10–1 100 101 10–1 100 101

(a) 2.5 (b) 2.5 (c) 2.5 (d ) 2.5

2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0

1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5

1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0

(a) (b) 0.03

To summarize, although turbulence decreases and is almost extinguished when

We gratefully acknowledge the support of ONR grant no. N00014-15-1-2718

simulation of strongly stratified turbulent flows. J. Fluid Mech. 585, 343–368.

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_div_classtitleRegeneration_of_turbulent_fluctuations_in_low-Froude-number_flow_over_a_sphere_at_a_Reynolds_number_of_3700__div_

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