An experimental study of the effects of rapid rotation on turbulence
Experiments, large eddy simulations and direct numerical simulations all show that rapid rotation has a striking effect on homogeneous nearly isotropic turbulence. The cascade process is effectively inhibited by rotation, and thus dissipation is greatly reduced. Some attempts have been made to incorporate this effect in turbulence models. Numerical simulation further showed the somewhat surprising result that anisotropic homogeneous turbulence subjected to rotation tended towards an isotropic state; however, the residual anisotropy was not zero. Reynolds (1989) performed a detailed analysis using Rapid Distortion Theory (RDT) and showed that a reduction in the anisotropy is indeed expected and if the anisotropy is produced by irrotational strain then the anisotropy tensor b(sub ij) is asymptotically driven to half its initial value. Our objective is to extend the work of the experiments mentioned above to lower turbulent Rossby numbers and to confirm some of the results obtained by Reynolds (1989) for anisotropic turbulence.