Baroclinic interaction of forced shock waves with random thermal gradients

Abstract

Density gradients aligned at an angle to pressure gradients result in baroclinic torque in fluid flows, generating vorticity. In this work, we study the vorticity generated by the baroclinic torque exerted by the interaction of pressure jumps across random two-dimensional shock waves with density gradients. A field of random two-dimensional shock waves has acoustic spectral energy scaling as ε^{2/3}{\ell}^{-1/3}k^{-2} where k is the wavenumber, ε is the energy dissipation, and \ell is the integral length scale of the field. Since the acoustic energy is broadband, pressure and velocity gradients exist in a wide range of length scales. We study the interaction of these broadband gradients with isobaric thermal gradients localized at a length scale in the spectral space. We show that the method of generating shock waves or injection of wave energy in the system governs the baroclinic interactions. For stochastically forced shock waves, baroclinic termsare negligible. Broadband vorticity with energy at least two orders of magnitude smaller is generated due to continuous variation in curvature of shock waves caused by stochastic forcing. On the other hand, shock waves maintained by energy rescaling result in the generation of coherent vorticity. We also discuss the relative magnitude of the baroclinic torque generated due to total density gradients compared to the one generated due to non-isentropic density gradients within the shock waves interacting with the pressure gradients.