Experimental investigation of vertical turbulent transport of a passive scalar in a boundary layer: Statistics and visibility graph analysis

The dynamics of a passive scalar plume in a turbulent boundary layer is experimentally investigated via vertical turbulent transport time series. Experimental data are acquired in a rough-wall turbulent boundary layer that develops in a recirculating wind tunnel setup. Two source sizes in an elevated position are considered in order to investigate the influence of the emission conditions on the plume dynamics. The analysis is focused on the effects of the meandering motion and the relative dispersion of the plume with respect to its center of mass. First, classical statistics are investigated. We found that (in accordance with previous studies) the meandering motion is the main factor responsible for differences in the variance and intermittency, as well as the kurtosis and power spectral density, between the two source sizes. On the contrary, the mean and the skewness are slightly affected by the emission conditions. With the aim to characterize the temporal structure of the turbulent transport series, the visibility algorithm is exploited to carry out a complex network-based analysis. In particular, two network metrics-the average peak occurrence and the assortativity coefficient-are analyzed, as they are able to capture the temporal occurrence of extreme events and their relative intensity in the series. The effects of the meandering motion and the relative dispersion of the plume are discussed in view of the network metrics, revealing that a stronger meandering motion is associated with higher values of both the average peak occurrence and the assortativity coefficient. The network-based analysis advances the level of information of classical statistics by characterizing the impact of the emission conditions on the temporal structure of the signals in terms of extreme events (namely, peaks and pits) and their relative intensity. In this way, complex networks provide-through the evaluation of network metrics-an effective tool for time-series analysis of experimental data.