There are two recurring themes in astrophysical and geophysical fluid mechanics: waves and turbulence. This book investigates how turbulence responds to rotation, stratification or magnetic fields, identifying common themes, where they exist, as well as the essential differences which inevitably arise between different classes of flow. The discussion is developed from first principles, making the book suitable for graduate students as well as professional researchers. The author focuses first on the fundamentals and then progresses to such topics as the atmospheric boundary layer, turbulence i.

Starting from first principles, this graduate-level monograph discusses turbulent flow in a wide range of geophysical and astrophysical settings.

Starting from first principles, this graduate-level monograph discusses turbulent flow in a wide range of geophysical and astrophysical settings.

There are two recurring themes in astrophysical and geophysical fluid mechanics: waves and turbulence. This book investigates how turbulence responds to rotation, stratification or magnetic fields, identifying common themes, where they exist, as well as the essential differences which inevitably arise between different classes of flow. The discussion is developed from first principles, making the book suitable for graduate students as well as professional researchers. The author focuses first on the fundamentals and then progresses to such topics as the atmospheric boundary layer, turbulence in the upper atmosphere, turbulence in the core of the earth, zonal winds in the giant planets, turbulence within the interior of the sun, the solar wind, and turbulent flows in accretion discs. The book will appeal to engineers, geophysicists, astrophysicists and applied mathematicians who are interested in naturally occurring turbulent flows.

This book explores the dynamics of planetary and stellar fluid layers, including atmospheres, oceans, iron cores, and convective and radiative zones in stars, describing the different theoretical, computational and experimental methods used to study these problems in fluid mechanics, including the advantages and limitations of each method for different problems. This scientific domain is by nature interdisciplinary and multi-method, but while much effort has been devoted to solving open questions within the various fields of mechanics, applied mathematics, physics, earth sciences and astrophysics, and while much progress has been made within each domain using theoretical, numerical and experimental approaches, cross-fertilizations have remained marginal. Going beyond the state of the art, the book provides readers with a global introduction and an up-to-date overview of relevant studies, fully addressing the wide range of disciplines and methods involved. The content builds on the CISM course “Fluid mechanics of planets and stars”, held in April 2018, which was part of the research project FLUDYCO, supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

The book presents a state-of-the-art overview of current developments in the field in a way accessible to attendees coming from a variety of fields. Relevant examples are turbulence research, (environmental) fluid mechanics, lake hydrodynamics and atmospheric physics. Topics discussed range from the fundamentals of rotating and stratified flows, mixing and transport in stratified or rotating turbulence, transport in the atmospheric boundary layer, the dynamics of gravity and turbidity currents eventually with effects of background rotation or stratification, mixing in (stratified) lakes, and the Lagrangian approach in the analysis of transport processes in geophysical and environmental flows. The topics are discussed from fundamental, experimental and numerical points of view. Some contributions cover fundamental aspects including a number of the basic dynamical properties of rotating and or stratified (turbulent) flows, the mathematical description of these flows, some applications in the natural environment, and the Lagrangian statistical analysis of turbulent transport processes and turbulent transport of material particles (including, for example, inertial and finite-size effects). Four papers are dedicated to specific topics such as transport in (stratified) lakes, transport and mixing in the atmospheric boundary layer, mixing in stratified fluids and dynamics of turbidity currents. The book is addressed to doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, but also to academic and industrial researchers and practicing engineers, with a background in mechanical engineering, applied physics, civil engineering, applied mathematics, meteorology, physical oceanography or physical limnology.

This textbook on rotating fluid dynamics combines a pedagogical development of theoretical ideas with a description and analysis of many of the fascinating examples of rotating flows found in nature. The book is self-contained, starting in Part I with introductory chapters on fluid dynamics and waves. The largest section of the book is Part II, where a broad theoretical framework is developed for rotating flows, including Ekman layers, inertial waves, Taylor columns, Rossby waves, precession, instabilities, rotating convection, vortex breakdown, and rotating turbulence. The book ends, in Part III, with an analysis of some naturally occurring rotating flows, including tornadoes and dust devils, tidal vortices, tropical cyclones, convection in planetary cores, zonal winds in planetary atmospheres, and astrophysical accretion discs. Davidson presents a unique combination of a deep but broad theoretical framework with a detailed discussion of many naturally occurring flows. Moreover, the book places great emphasis on the pedagogical development of theoretical ideas and the physical insight that brings.

Comprehensive textbook prioritising physical ideas over mathematical detail. New material includes fusion plasma magnetohydrodynamics.

This book provides a general introduction to the topic of turbulent flows. Apart from classical topics in turbulence, attention is also paid to modern topics. After studying this work, the reader will have the basic knowledge to follow current topics on turbulence in scientific literature. The theory is illustrated with a number of examples of applications, such as closure models, numerical simulations and turbulent diffusion, and experimental findings. The work also contains a number of illustrative exercises Review from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association that awarded the book with the 2017 Most Promising New Textbook Award: “Compared to other books in this subject, we find this one to be very up-to-date and effective at explaining this complicated subject. We certainly would highly recommend it as a text for students and practicing professionals who wish to expand their understanding of modern fluid mechanics.”

Turbulence and the associated turbulent transport of scalar and vector fields is a classical physics problem that has dazzled scientists for over a century, yet many fundamental questions remain. Igor Rogachevskii, in this concise book, systematically applies various analytical methods to the turbulent transfer of temperature, particles and magnetic field. Introducing key concepts in turbulent transport including essential physics principles and statistical tools, this interdisciplinary book is suitable for a range of readers such as theoretical physicists, astrophysicists, geophysicists, plasma physicists, and researchers in fluid mechanics and related topics in engineering. With an overview to various analytical methods such as mean-field approach, dimensional analysis, multi-scale approach, quasi-linear approach, spectral tau approach, path-integral approach and analysis based on budget equations, it is also an accessible reference tool for advanced graduates, PhD students and researchers.