THE STRUCTURE OF A TURBULENT FREE SHEAR-LAYER IN A ROTATING FLUID

An experimental investigation has been carried out on the effects of rotation on the development and structure of turbulence in a free shear layer, oriented so that its mean vorticity is parallel or antiparallel to the system vorticity. The effective local Rossby number extended down to about 1/3. The experimental methods were hydrogen-bubble flow visualization and hot-film anemometry. In summarizing the results we refer to stabilized flow when the system vorticity has the same sign as the shear vorticity and destabilized and subsequently restabilized when it has the opposite sign (Tritton 1992). The roller eddy pattern. familiar in non-rotating flow, was observed in all stabilized flows. but was almost completely disrupted by even weak destabilization. Notable features of the quantitative results were: reorientation by Coriolis effects of the Reynolds stress tensor (inferred from the ratio of the cross-stream to longitudinal turbulence intensity and the normalized shear stress); changes in the ratio of spanwise to longitudinal intensity similar to but weaker than changes in the ratio of cross-stream to longitudinal; a gradual decrease, with increasing stabilization, of the Reynolds shear stress leading ultimately to its changing sign: an increase of the Reynolds shear stress in the destabilized range followed by rapid collapse to almost zero with restabilization. Absolute intensities did not change in line with the turbulence energy production, implying enhancement of dissipation in destabilized flow and inhibition in stabilized and restabilized. Correlation measurements indicated changes of lengthscale in the spanwise direction, and spectra indicated changes in the longitudinal direction that suggest that this enhancement and inhibition are associated with variations between fully three-dimensional and partially two-dimensional turbulence. Data for a wake in a rotating fluid (Witt & Joubert 1985) show similarities to some of the above observations and can be incorporated into the interpretation.