70th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (November 19, 2017 — November 21, 2017)

P0021: Stratified Eiphil Towers on Continental Shelves

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Authors

• Camassa Roberto, Joint Fluids Lab., University of North Carolina, Chapman Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
• Harabin George, Joint Fluids Lab., University of North Carolina, Chapman Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
• McLaughlin Richard, Joint Fluids Lab., University of North Carolina, Chapman Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
• Pierre-Yves Passaggia, Marine Sciences Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2017.GFM.P0021

The present geometry consists of a tilted half pipe immersed in a linearly salt stratified fluid. Here the visualization is initialized with a blob of dye which is mixed with fluid and injected near its neutral buoyancy height. The flow is set to evolve for twenty hours. The dye used in this experiment is a Blue Dextran which is based of sugar and has thus a slower diffusion rate than the ambient salty fluid. The blob of dye starts by spreading down each side of the pipe and shortly after, staircases start to form where these sugar "fingers" have spread. These intrusions form the "feet" of our dye structure and slowly spread horizontally in time. Meanwhile, the Phillips' flow entrains the dye up the centerline of the pipe where the layers spread, forming the top of our structure. After 20 hours, this dyed structure made of salt, water and sugar gives rise to an Eiffel tower like structure, which we denote here as an "Ei[phil" tower.