arXiv subjects

Peter J. Diamessis

Publications and source records attributed to Peter J. Diamessis.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Formation and evolution of turbulence in convectively unstable internal solitary waves of depression shoaling over gentle slopes in the South China Sea

The shoaling of high-amplitude Internal Solitary Waves (ISWs) of depression in the South China Sea (SCS) is examined through large-scale parallel turbulence-resolving high-accuracy/resolution simulations. A select, near-isobath-normal, bathymetric transect of the gentle SCS continental slope is employed together with stratification and current profiles obtained by in-situ measurements. Three simulations of separate ISWs with initial deep-water amplitudes in the range [136m, 150m] leverage a novel wave-tracking capability for a propagation distance of 80km and accurately reproduce key features of in-situ-observed phenomena with significantly higher spatiotemporal resolution. The interplay between convective and shear instability and the associated turbulence formation and evolution, as a function of deep-water ISW amplitude are further studied in-part revealing processes previously not observed in the field. Across all three waves, the convective instability develops in a similar fashion. Heavier water entrained from the wave rear plunges into its interior, giving rise to transient, yet distinct, subsurface vortical structures. Ultimately, a gravity current is triggered which horizontally advances through the wave interior and mixes it down to pycnocline's base. Although the waveform remains distinctly symmetric, Kelvin-Helmholtz billows emerge near the well-mixed ISW trough, disturb the wave's trailing edge and give rise to an active wake. The evolution of the kinetic energy associated with finer-scale perturbations to the ISW-induced velocity field shows two different growth regimes, each dominated by either convective or shear instability. The wake's perturbation kinetic energy is nonlinearly dependent on deep-water wave amplitude and can become a sizable fraction of the kinetic energy of the deep-water ISW.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2016

Experimental study of the initial growth of a localized turbulent patch in a stably stratified fluid

We present a laboratory experiment of the growth of a turbulent patch in a stably stratified fluid, due to a localized source of turbulence, generated by an oscillating grid. Synchronized and overlapping particle image velocimetry and planar laser induced fluorescence measurements have been conducted capturing the evolution of the patch through its initial growth until it reached a maximum size, followed by its collapse. The simultaneous measurements of density and velocity fields allow for a direct quantification of the degree of mixing within the patch, the propagation speed of the turbulent/non-turbulent interface and its thickness. The velocity measurements indicate significant non-equilibrium effects inside the patch which are not consistent with the classical used grid-action model. A local analysis of the turbulent/non-turbulent interface provides direct measurements of the entrainment velocity $w_{e}$ as compared to the local vertical velocity and turbulent intensity at the proximity of the interface. It is found that the entrainment rate $E$ is constrained in the range of $0÷0.1$ and that the local, gradient Richardson number at the interface is $\mathcal{O} (100)$. Finally, we show that the mean flow is responsible for the patch collapse.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2015

A post-processing technique for stabilizing the discontinuous pressure projection operator in marginally-resolved incompressible inviscid flow

A method for post-processing the velocity after a pressure projection is developed that helps to maintain stability in an under-resolved, inviscid, discontinuous element-based simulation for use in environmental fluid mechanics process studies. The post-processing method is needed because of spurious divergence growth at element interfaces due to the discontinuous nature of the discretization used. This spurious divergence eventually leads to a numerical instability. Previous work has shown that a discontinuous element-local projection onto the space of divergence-free basis functions is capable of stabilizing the projection method, but the discontinuity inherent in this technique may lead to instability in under-resolved simulations. By enforcing inter-element discontinuity and requiring a divergence-free result in the weak sense only, a new post-processing technique is developed that simultaneously improves smoothness and reduces divergence in the pressure-projected velocity field at the same time. When compared against a non-post-processed velocity field, the post-processed velocity field remains stable far longer and exhibits better smoothness and conservation properties.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2015

Deflation-accelerated preconditioning of the Poisson-Neumann Schur problem on long domains with a high-order discontinuous element-based collocation method

A combination of block-Jacobi and deflation preconditioning is used to solve a high-order discontinuous collocation-based discretization of the Schur complement of the Poisson-Neumann system as arises in the operator splitting of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The preconditioners and deflation vectors are chosen to mitigate the effects of ill-conditioning due to highly-elongated domains and to achieve GMRES convergence independent of the size of the grid. The ill-posedness of the Poisson-Neumann system manifests as an inconsistency of the Schur complement problem, but it is shown that this can be accounted for with appropriate projections out of the null space of the Schur matrix without affecting the accuracy of the solution. The combined deflation/block-Jacobi preconditioning is compared with two-level non-overlapping additive Schwarz preconditioning of the Schur problem, and while both methods achieve convergence independent of the grid size, deflation is shown to require half as many GMRES iterations and $25\%$ less wall-clock time for a variety of grid sizes and domain aspect ratios. The deflation methods shown to be effective for the two-dimensional Poisson-Neumann problem are extensible to the three-dimensional problem assuming a Fourier discretization in the third dimension.

math.NA↗