Modelling turbulent fluxes due to thermal convection in rectilinear shearing flow

TL;DR

This paper revisits a phenomenological model of turbulent thermal convection in shearing flows, aiming to improve calculations of heat and momentum fluxes in stellar environments.

Contribution

It refines a classical model by Gough (1965) to better describe turbulent fluxes in shearing, stratified flows relevant to stellar physics.

Findings

Enhanced understanding of eddy growth and destruction mechanisms.

Framework for calculating turbulent fluxes in stellar shear flows.

Potential applications to stellar evolution modeling.

Abstract

We revisit a phenomenological description of turbulent thermal convection along the lines proposed originally by Gough (1965) in which eddies grow solely by extracting energy from the unstably stratified mean state and are subsequently destroyed by internal shear instability. This work is part of an ongoing investigation for finding a procedure to calculate the turbulent fluxes of heat and momentum in the presence of a shearing background flow in stars.