A Fourier-Chebyshev pseudospectral method for horizontal flows with heat or mass

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Abdolmajid Mohammadian

Wednesday 1 july 2015

12:30 - 12:33h at Antarctica (level 0)

Themes: Poster pitches, (T) Special session, (ST) Marine outfall system

Parallel session: Poster pitches: 9D. Special Session: Marine Outfall Systems

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In this paper we consider a class of horizontal flows dominated by heat or mass sources and present some new analytical solutions for them. These equations systematically arise as the small-scale component in several multi scale models developed for the simulation of complex phenomena such as hurricane embryos and convectively-coupled waves in the tropics. We also discuss the physical insights obtained by these solutions and examine the stability of these flows based on the proposed analytical solutions under various circumstances. Moreover, the proposed solutions can be used as bench mark problems for the validation of numerical models. A Chebyshev-Fourier pseudospectral model is also proposed for numerical simulation of these flows. The numerical results are validated using analytical solutions which show an excellent performance of the numerical model in terms of numerical diffusion. Moreover, the model results are free of numerical oscillations, which demonstrates that the balance between the source and flux terms is well preserved by the numerical method. The developed model can be used as the building block of a multiple-scale model to study complex problems such as hurricane embryos.