Comparative experimental study of local mixing of active and passive scalars in turbulent thermal convection

TL;DR

This study experimentally compares active and passive scalar behaviors in turbulent thermal convection, revealing differences in distribution, intermittency, and anisotropy related to the Bolgiano time scale, with implications for understanding scalar mixing.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed experimental comparison of active and passive scalars in turbulent thermal convection, highlighting the role of the Bolgiano scale in scalar intermittency and anisotropy.

Findings

Temperature is more intermittent than concentration above the Bolgiano time scale.

Both scalars exhibit isotropic mixing at scales larger than the Bolgiano time scale.

Temperature shows higher anisotropy than concentration below the Bolgiano time scale.

Abstract

We investigate experimentally the statistical properties of active and passive scalar fields in turbulent Rayleigh-B\'{e}nard convection in water, at $Ra\sim10^{10}$. Both the local concentration of fluorescence dye and the local temperature are measured near the sidewall of a rectangular cell. It is found that, although they are advected by the same turbulent flow, the two scalars distribute differently. This difference is twofold, i.e. both the quantities themselves and their small-scale increments have different distributions. Our results show that there is a certain buoyant scale based on time domain, i.e. the Bolgiano time scale $t_B$, above which buoyancy effects are significant. Above $t_B$, temperature is active and is found to be more intermittent than concentration, which is passive. This suggests that the active scalar possesses a higher level of intermittency in turbulent thermal convection. It is further found that the mixing of both scalar fields are isotropic for scales larger than $t_B$ even though buoyancy acts on the fluid in the vertical direction. Below $t_B$, temperature is passive and is found to be more anisotropic than concentration. But this higher degree of anisotropy is attributed to the higher diffusivity of temperature over that of concentration. From the simultaneous measurements of temperature and concentration, it is shown that two scalars have similar autocorrelation functions and there is a strong and positive correlation between them.