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Joerg Schumacher

Publications and source records attributed to Joerg Schumacher.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2024

Local precursors to anomalous dissipation in Navier-Stokes turbulence: Burgers vortex-type models and simulation analysis

Anomalous dissipation is a dissipation mechanism of kinetic energy which is established by a sufficiently spatially rough velocity field. It implies that the rescaled mean kinetic energy dissipation rate becomes constant with respect to Reynolds number ${\rm Re}$, the dimensionless parameter that characterizes the strength of turbulence, given that ${\rm Re}\gg 1$. The present study aims at bridging this statistical behavior of high-Reynolds-number turbulence to specific structural building blocks of fluid turbulence -- local vortex stretching configurations which take in the simplest case the form of Burgers' classical vortex stretching model from 1948. We discuss the anomalous dissipation in the framework of Duchon and Robert for this analytical solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, apply the same analysis subsequently to a generalized model of randomly oriented Burgers vortices by Kambe and Hatakeyama, and analyse finally direct numerical simulation data of three-dimensional homogeneous, isotropic box turbulence in this respect. We identify local high-vorticity events in fully developed Navier-Stokes turbulence that approximate the analytical models of strong vortex stretching well. They also correspond to precursors of enhanced anomalous dissipation.

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arXiv2023

Assessing non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq effects of convection in cryogenic helium

The present study investigates the non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq (NOB) effects which arise due to the temperature dependence of material properties in cryogenic helium experiments of turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection. They are manifest as a difference of the measured mean temperature at the center of the closed cell, $T_c$, from the arithmetic mean temperature obtained from the prescribed fixed and uniform temperatures at the top and bottom copper plates of the apparatus, $T_m = (T_{bot} +T_{top})=2$. Therefore, the material properties such as specific heat at constant pressure, dynamic viscosity, thermal conductivity, the isobaric expansivity, and the mass density are expanded into power series with respect to temperature up to the quadratic order with coeffcients obtained from the software package HEPAK. A subsequent nonlinear regression that uses deep convolutional networks delivers a dependence of the strength of non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq effects in the pressure-temperature parameter plane. Strength of the NOB effects is evaluated via the deviation of the mean temperature profile $ξ_{NOB} = T_m - T_c$ from the top/bottom-symmetric Oberbeck-Boussinesq case $ξ_{NOB} = 0$. Training data for the regression task are obtained from 236 individual long-term laboratory measurements at different Rayleigh numbers which span 8 orders of magnitude.

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arXiv2021

Embedding classical dynamics in a quantum computer

We develop a framework for simulating measure-preserving, ergodic dynamical systems on a quantum computer. Our approach provides a new operator-theoretic representation of classical dynamics by combining ergodic theory with quantum information science. The resulting quantum embedding of classical dynamics (QECD) enables efficient simulation of spaces of classical observables with exponentially large dimension using a quadratic number of quantum gates. The QECD framework is based on a quantum feature map for representing classical states by density operators on a reproducing kernel Hilbert space, $\mathcal H $, and an embedding of classical observables into self-adjoint operators on $\mathcal H$. In this scheme, quantum states and observables evolve unitarily under the lifted action of Koopman evolution operators of the classical system. Moreover, by virtue of the reproducing property of $\mathcal H$, the quantum system is pointwise-consistent with the underlying classical dynamics. To achieve an exponential quantum computational advantage, we project the state of the quantum system to a density matrix on a $2^n$-dimensional tensor product Hilbert space associated with $n$ qubits. By employing discrete Fourier-Walsh transforms, the evolution operator of the finite-dimensional quantum system is factorized into tensor product form, enabling implementation through a quantum circuit of size $O(n)$. Furthermore, the circuit features a state preparation stage, also of size $O(n)$, and a quantum Fourier transform stage of size $O(n^2)$, which makes predictions of observables possible by measurement in the standard computational basis. We prove theoretical convergence results for these predictions as $n\to\infty$. We present simulated quantum circuit experiments in Qiskit Aer, as well as actual experiments on the IBM Quantum System One.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2021

Connecting boundary layer dynamics with extreme bulk dissipation events in Rayleigh-Bénard flow

We study the connection between extreme events of thermal and kinetic energy dissipation rates in the bulk of three-dimensional Rayleigh-Bénard convection and the wall shear stress patterns at the top and the bottom planes that enclose the layer. Zero points of this two-dimensional vector field stand for detachments of strong thermal plumes. If their position at the opposite planes and a given time is close then they can be considered as precursors for high-amplitude bulk dissipation events triggered by plume collisions or close passings. This scenario requires a breaking of the synchronicity of the boundary layer dynamics at both plates which is found to be in line with a transition of the bulk derivative statistics from Gaussian to intermittent. Our studies are based on three-dimensional high-resolution direct numerical simulations for moderate Rayleigh numbers between $Ra=10^4$ and $5\times 10^5$.

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arXiv2020

Rayleigh-Bénard Convection in Strong Vertical Magnetic Field: Flow Structure and Verification of Numerical Method

Direct numerical simulations are performed to study turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection in a vertical cylindrical cavity with uniform axial magnetic field. Flows at high Hartmann and Rayleigh numbers are considered. The calculations reveal that, similarly to the behavior observed in Rayleigh-Bénard convection with strong rotation, flows at strong magnetic field develop a central vortex, while the heat transfer is suppressed.

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arXiv2020

Turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection in a strong vertical magnetic field

Direct numerical simulations are carried out to study flow structure and transport properties in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection in a cylindrical cell of aspect ratio one with an imposed axial magnetic field. Flows at the Prandtl number 0.025 and the Rayleigh and Hartmann numbers up to $10^9$ and 1400 are considered. The results are consistent with those of earlier experimental and numerical data. As anticipated, the heat transfer rate and kinetic energy are suppressed by strong magnetic field. At the same time, their growth with the Rayleigh number is found to be faster in flows at high Hartmann numbers. This behaviour is attributed to the newly discovered flow regime characterized by prominent quasi two-dimensional structures reminiscent of vortex sheets observed earlier in simulations of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. Rotating wall modes similar to those in the Rayleigh-Bénard convection with rotation are found in flows near the Chandrasekhar linear stability limit. Detailed analysis of the spatial structure of the flows and its effect of global transport properties is reported.

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arXiv2018

Koopman analysis of the long-term evolution in a turbulent convection cell

We analyse the long-time evolution of the three-dimensional flow in a closed cubic turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection cell via a Koopman eigenfunction analysis. A data-driven basis derived from diffusion kernels known in machine learning is employed here to represent a regularized generator of the unitary Koopman group in the sense of a Galerkin approximation. The resulting Koopman eigenfunctions can be grouped into subsets in accordance with the discrete symmetries in a cubic box. In particular, a projection of the velocity field onto the first group of eigenfunctions reveals the four stable large-scale circulation (LSC) states in the convection cell. We recapture the preferential circulation rolls in diagonal corners and the short-term switching through roll states parallel to the side faces which have also been seen in other simulations and experiments. The diagonal macroscopic flow states can last as long as a thousand convective free-fall time units. In addition, we find that specific pairs of Koopman eigenfunctions in the secondary subset obey enhanced oscillatory fluctuations for particular stable diagonal states of the LSC. The corresponding velocity field structures, such as corner vortices and swirls in the midplane, are also discussed via spatiotemporal reconstructions.

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arXiv2016

Extreme dissipation event due to plume collision in a turbulent convection cell

An extreme dissipation event in the bulk of a closed three-dimensional turbulent convection cell is found to be correlated with a strong reduction of the large-scale circulation flow in the system that happens at the same time as a plume emission event from the bottom plate. The reduction in the large-scale circulation opens the possibility for a nearly frontal collision of down- and upwelling plumes and the generation of a high-amplitude thermal dissipation layer in the bulk. This collision is locally connected to a subsequent high-amplitude energy dissipation event in the form of a strong shear layer. Our analysis illustrates the impact of transitions in the large-scale structures on extreme events at the smallest scales of the turbulence, a direct link that is observed in a flow with boundary layers. We also show that detection of extreme dissipation events which determine the far-tail statistics of the dissipation fields in the bulk requires long-time integrations of the equations of motion over at least hundred convective time units.

physics.flu-dyn↗
arXiv2016

Heat transport in Rayleigh-Benard convection and angular momentum transport in Taylor-Couette flow: a comparative study

Rayleigh-Benard convection and Taylor-Couette flow are two canonical flows that have many properties in common. We here compare the two flows in detail for parameter values where the Nusselt numbers, i.e. the thermal transport and the angular momentum transport normalized by the corresponding laminar values, coincide. We study turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection in air at Rayleigh number Ra=1e7 and Taylor-Couette flow at shear Reynolds number Re_S=2e4 for two different mean rotation rates but the same Nusselt numbers. For individual pairwise related fields and convective currents, we compare the probability density functions normalized by the corresponding root mean square values and taken at different distances from the wall. We find one rotation number for which there is very good agreement between the mean profiles of the two corresponding quantities temperature and angular momentum. Similarly, there is good agreement between the fluctuations in temperature and velocity components. For the heat and angular momentum currents, there are differences in the fluctuations outside the boundary layers that increase with overall rotation and can be related to differences in the flow structures in the boundary layer and in the bulk. The study extends the similarities between the two flows from global quantities to local quantities and reveals the effects of rotation on the transport.

physics.flu-dyn↗
arXiv2016

Global and local statistics in turbulent convection at low Prandtl numbers

Statistical properties of turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection at low Prandtl numbers (Pr), which are typical for liquid metals such as mercury, gallium or liquid sodium, are investigated in high-resolution three-dimensional spectral element simulations in a closed cylindrical cell with an aspect ratio of one and are compared to previous turbulent convection simulations in air. We compare the scaling of global momentum and heat transfer. The scaling exponents are found to be in agreement with experiments. Mean profiles of the root-mean-square velocity as well as the thermal and kinetic energy dissipation rates have growing amplitudes with decreasing Prandtl number which underlies a more vigorous bulk turbulence in the low-Pr regime. The skin-friction coefficient displays a Reynolds-number dependence that is close to that of an isothermal, intermittently turbulent velocity boundary layer. The thermal boundary layer thicknesses are larger as Pr decreases and conversely the velocity boundary layer thicknesses become smaller. We investigate the scaling exponents and find a slight decrease in exponent magnitude for the thermal boundary layer thickness as Pr decreases, but find the opposite case for the velocity boundary layer thickness scaling. A growing area fraction of turbulent patches close to the heating and cooling plates can be detected by exceeding a locally defined shear Reynolds number threshold. This area fraction is larger for lower Pr at the same Ra. Our analysis of the kurtosis of the locally defined shear Reynolds number demonstrates that the intermittency in the boundary layer is significantly increased for the lower Prandtl number and for sufficiently high Rayleigh number compared to convection in air. This complements our previous findings of enhanced bulk intermittency in low-Prandtl-number convection.

physics.flu-dyn↗
arXiv2014

Local boundary layer scales in turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection

We compute fully local boundary layer scales in three-dimensional turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection. These scales are directly connected to the highly intermittent fluctuations of the fluxes of momentum and heat at the isothermal top and bottom walls and are statistically distributed around the corresponding mean thickness scales. The local boundary layer scales also reflect the strong spatial inhomogeneities of both boundary layers due to the large-scale, but complex and intermittent, circulation that builds up in closed convection cells. Similar to turbulent boundary layers, we define inner scales based on local shear stress which can be consistently extended to the classical viscous scales in bulk turbulence, e.g. the Kolmogorov scale, and outer scales based on slopes at the wall. We discuss the consequences of our generalization, in particular the scaling of our inner and outer boundary layer thicknesses and the resulting shear Reynolds number with respect to Rayleigh number. The mean outer thickness scale for the temperature field is close to the standard definition of a thermal boundary layer thickness. In the case of the velocity field, under certain conditions the outer scale follows a similar scaling as the Prandtl-Blasius type definition with respect to Rayleigh number, but differs quantitatively. The friction coefficient c_epsilon scaling is found to fall right between the laminar and turbulent limits which indicates that the boundary layer exhibits transitional behavior. Additionally, we conduct an analysis of the recently suggested dissipation layer thickness scales versus Rayleigh number and find a transition in the scaling. We also performed one study of aspect ratio equal to three in the case of Ra=1e+8.

physics.flu-dyn↗
arXiv2013

Resolving the fine-scale structure in turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection

We present high-resolution direct numerical simulation studies of turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection in a closed cylindrical cell with an aspect ratio of one. The focus of our analysis is on the finest scales of convective turbulence, in particular the statistics of the kinetic energy and thermal dissipation rates in the bulk and the whole cell. The fluctuations of the energy dissipation field can directly be translated into a fluctuating local dissipation scale which is found to develop ever finer fluctuations with increasing Rayleigh number. The range of these scales as well as the probability of high-amplitude dissipation events decreases with increasing Prandtl number. In addition, we examine the joint statistics of the two dissipation fields and the consequences of high-amplitude events. We also have investigated the convergence properties of our spectral element method and have found that both dissipation fields are very sensitive to insufficient resolution. We demonstrate that global transport properties, such as the Nusselt number, and the energy balances are partly insensitive to insufficient resolution and yield correct results even when the dissipation fields are under-resolved. Our present numerical framework is also compared with high-resolution simulations which use a finite difference method. For most of the compared quantities the agreement is found to be satisfactory.

physics.flu-dyn↗
arXiv2012

Cloud microphysical effects of turbulent mixing and entrainment

Turbulent mixing and entrainment at the boundary of a cloud is studied by means of direct numerical simulations that couple the Eulerian description of the turbulent velocity and water vapor fields with a Lagrangian ensemble of cloud water droplets that can grow and shrink by condensation and evaporation, respectively. The focus is on detailed analysis of the relaxation process of the droplet ensemble during the entrainment of subsaturated air, in particular the dependence on turbulence time scales, droplet number density, initial droplet radius and particle inertia. We find that the droplet evolution during the entrainment process is captured best by a phase relaxation time that is based on the droplet number density with respect to the entire simulation domain and the initial droplet radius. Even under conditions favoring homogeneous mixing, the probability density function of supersaturation at droplet locations exhibits initially strong negative skewness, consistent with droplets near the cloud boundary being suddenly mixed into clear air, but rapidly approaches a narrower, symmetric shape. The droplet size distribution, which is initialized as perfectly monodisperse, broadens and also becomes somewhat negatively skewed. Particle inertia and gravitational settling lead to a more rapid initial evaporation, but ultimately only to slight depletion of both tails of the droplet size distribution. The Reynolds number dependence of the mixing process remained weak over the parameter range studied, most probably due to the fact that the inhomogeneous mixing regime could not be fully accessed when phase relaxation times based on global number density are considered.

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arXiv2012

Moist turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection with Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions

Turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection with phase changes in an extended layer between two parallel impermeable planes is studied by means of three-dimensional direct numerical simulations for Rayleigh numbers between 10^4 and 1.5\times 10^7 and for Prandtl number Pr=0.7. Two different sets of boundary conditions of temperature and total water content are compared: imposed constant amplitudes which translate into Dirichlet boundary conditions for the scalar field fluctuations about the quiescent diffusive equilibrium and constant imposed flux boundary conditions that result in Neumann boundary conditions. Moist turbulent convection is in the conditionally unstable regime throughout this study for which unsaturated air parcels are stably and saturated air parcels unstably stratified. A direct comparison of both sets of boundary conditions with the same parameters requires to start the turbulence simulations out of differently saturated equilibrium states. Similar to dry Rayleigh-Benard convection the differences in the turbulent velocity fluctuations, the cloud cover and the convective buoyancy flux decrease across the layer with increasing Rayleigh number. At the highest Rayleigh numbers the system is found in a two-layer regime, a dry cloudless and stably stratified layer with low turbulence level below a fully saturated and cloudy turbulent one which equals classical Rayleigh-Benard convection layer. Both are separated by a strong inversion that gets increasingly narrower for growing Rayleigh number.

physics.flu-dyn↗
arXiv2012

Boundary layer structure in turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection

The structure of the boundary layers in turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection is studied by means of three-dimensional direct numerical simulations. We consider convection in a cylindrical cell at an aspect ratio one for Rayleigh numbers of Ra=3e+9 and 3e+10 at fixed Prandtl number Pr=0.7. Similar to the experimental results in the same setup and for the same Prandtl number, the structure of the laminar boundary layers of the velocity and temperature fields is found to deviate from the prediction of the Prandtl-Blasius-Pohlhausen theory. Deviations decrease when a dynamical rescaling of the data with an instantaneously defined boundary layer thickness is performed and the analysis plane is aligned with the instantaneous direction of the large-scale circulation in the closed cell. Our numerical results demonstrate that important assumptions which enter existing classical laminar boundary layer theories for forced and natural convection are violated, such as the strict two-dimensionality of the dynamics or the steadiness of the fluid motion. The boundary layer dynamics consists of two essential local dynamical building blocks, a plume detachment and a post-plume phase. The former is associated with larger variations of the instantaneous thickness of velocity and temperature boundary layer and a fully three-dimensional local flow. The post-plume dynamics is connected with the large-scale circulation in the cell that penetrates the boundary region from above. The mean turbulence profiles taken in localized sections of the boundary layer for both dynamical phases are also compared with solutions of perturbation expansions of the boundary layer equations of forced or natural convection towards mixed convection. Our analysis of both boundary layers shows that the near-wall dynamics combines elements of forced Blasius-type and natural convection.

physics.flu-dyn↗
arXiv2011

Rayleigh-Benard convection with phase changes in a Galerkin model

The transition to turbulence in Rayleigh-Benard convection with phase changes and the resulting convective patterns are studied in a three-dimensional Galerkin model. Our study is focused to the conditionally unstable regime of moist convection in which the stratification is stable for unsaturated air parcels and unstable for saturated parcels. We perform a comprehensive statistical analysis of the transition to convection that samples the dependence of attractors (or fixed points) in the phase space of the model on the dimensionless parameters. Conditionally unstable convection can be initiated either from a fully unsaturated linearly stable equilibrium or a fully saturated linearly unstable equilibrium. Highly localized moist convection can be found in steady state, in oscillating recharge-discharge regime or turbulent in dependence on the aspect ratio and the degree of stable stratification of the unsaturated air. Our phase space analysis predicts parameter ranges for which self-sustained convective regimes in the case of subcritical conditional instability can be observed. The observed regime transitions for moist convection bear some similarities to transitions to turbulence in simple shear flows.

physics.flu-dyn↗
arXiv2011

Low-dimensional model of turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection in a Cartesian cell with square domain

A low-dimensional model (LDM) for turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection in a Cartesian cell with square domain, based on the Galerkin projection of the Boussinesq equations onto a finite set of empirical eigenfunctions, is presented. The empirical eigenfunctions are obtained from a joint Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) of the velocity and temperature fields using the Snapshot Method on the basis of a direct numerical simulation (DNS). The resulting LDM is a quadratic inhomogeneous system of coupled ordinary differential equations which we use to describe the long-time temporal evolution of the large-scale mode amplitudes for a Rayleigh number of 1e5 and a Prandtl number of 0.7. The truncation to a finite number of degrees of freedom, that does not exceed a number of 310 for the present, requires the additional implementation of an eddy viscosity-diffusivity to capture the missing dissipation of the small-scale modes. The magnitude of this additional dissipation mechanism is determined by requiring statistical stationarity and a total dissipation that corresponds with the original DNS data. We compare the performance of two models, a constant so-called Heisenberg viscosity--diffusivity and a mode-dependent or modal one. The latter viscosity--diffusivity model turns out to reproduce the large-scale properties of the turbulent convection qualitatively well, even for a model with only a few hundred POD modes.

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