Affiliations: Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-1191, USA. E-mail: [email protected] | Laboratoire des Ecoulements Géophysiques
et Industriels (LEGI), CNRS-UJF-INPG, Grenoble, France
Abstract: Careful exploitation of the anisotropy native to late time
stratified and rotating flows permits the use of a laser scanning measurement
technique to simultaneously resolve the 2D velocity field in O(100) slices. The
technique relies on getting the Reynolds number from the length scale while
keeping the velocity small, this provides a characteristic time scale that is
sufficiently large to permit full 3D scanning through the measurement volume in
a relatively short time. As the vertical velocity component of these late time
stratified flows is effectively zero, all components of the deformation tensor
are resolved. 3D, time resolved measurements of the vorticity and enstrophy
fields associated with stratified rotating flows such as vortex dipoles,
monopoles and wakes are presented.