arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to David C. Montgomery.
By re-interpreting a recent successful closure procedure in terms of local spatial averaging and the neglect of fluctuations about that average, it is shown how the results of that closure scheme (the ''alpha model'') may be more simply derived.
Numerical studies of the effect of a dc magnetic field on dynamo action (development of magnetic fields with large spatial scales), due to helically-driven magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, are reported. The apparent effect of the dc magnetic field is to suppress the dynamo action, above a relatively low threshold. However, the possibility that the suppression results from an improper combination of rectangular triply spatially-periodic boundary conditions and a uniform dc magnetic field is addressed: heretofore a common and convenient computational convention in turbulence investigations. Physical reasons for the observed suppression are suggested. Other geometries and boundary conditions are offered for which the dynamo action is expected not to be suppressed by the presence of a dc magnetic field component.
We evaluate numerically the velocity field distributions produced by a bounded, two-dimensional fluid model consisting of a collection of parallel ideal line vortices. We sample at many spatial points inside a rigid circular boundary. We focus on ``nearest neighbor'' contributions that result from vortices that fall (randomly) very close to the spatial points where the velocity is being sampled. We confirm that these events lead to a non-Gaussian high-velocity ``tail'' on an otherwise Gaussian distribution function for the Eulerian velocity field. We also investigate the behavior of distributions that do not have equilibrium mean-field probability distributions that are uniform inside the circle, but instead correspond to both higher and lower mean-field energies than those associated with the uniform vorticity distribution. We find substantial differences between these and the uniform case.
Certain unresolved ambiguities surround pressure determinations for incompressible flows, both Navier-Stokes and magnetohydrodynamic. For uniform-density fluids with standard Newtonian viscous terms, taking the divergence of the equation of motion leaves a Poisson equation for the pressure to be solved. But Poisson equations require boundary conditions. For the case of rectangular periodic boundary conditions, pressures determined in this way are unambiguous. But in the presence of "no-slip" rigid walls, the equation of motion can be used to infer both Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions on the pressure P, and thus amounts to an over-determination. This has occasionally been recognized as a problem, and numerical treatments of wall-bounded shear flows usually have built in some relatively ad hoc dynamical recipe for dealing with it, often one which appears to "work" satisfactorily. Here we consider a class of solenoidal velocity fields which vanish at no-slip walls, have all spatial derivatives, but are simple enough that explicit analytical solutions for P can be given. Satisfying the two boundary conditions separately gives two pressures, a "Neumann pressure" and a "Dirichlet pressure" which differ non-trivially at the initial instant, even before any dynamics are implemented. We compare the two pressures, and find that in particular, they lead to different volume forces near the walls. This suggests a reconsideration of no-slip boundary conditions, in which the vanishing of the tangential velocity at a no-slip wall is replaced by a local wall-friction term in the equation of motion.