Scientific results
The scientific results extracted from many Cray C-90 hours at Pittsburgh
Supercomputing Center may be summarised as follows:
- Flow topology.
Flow divided into laminar, cellular network at the surface, with general
turbulence in the interior punctuated by coherent downflows.
- Surface time-dependence.
Laminar surface topology is changed significantly with the
addition of rotation: more curvaceous, more time-dependent, different
cell formation mechanisms.
- Vortex tubes.
Underlying turbulence characterised by vortex tube-like structures.
Coherent structures are strong vortices covering a significant depth,
originating at the surface downflow interstices. Interior turbulence is
small-scale random tubes.
- Vortex mixing.
Rotation enhances the mixing properties of the flow, affecting the
thermodynamics of the layer and the degree of isotropy of the
turbulence.
- Alignment.
Coherent structures exist and can be influenced by moderate-strong
rotation: strong vortex structures representing the coherent downflows can
adopt the tilt of the rotation vector if the rotation is sufficiently
strong. This tilting mechanism is distinctly different from laminar
Boussinesq.
- Mean flows.
Mean meridional and zonal flows can thus be generated by the rotation
from the correlations of vertical and horizontal velocity inherent in
the aligned and tilted structures.
- Mean flows.
The means exhibit some of the features of the observed solar rotation
for certain parameters, such as a constant-with-radius interior ...
- Spiral mean flows.
... and spiralling of the mean flow vectors with depth.
For further illumination, you could peruse some pertinent
papers .
