Secondary threshold amplitudes for sinuous streak breakdown

The nonlinear stability of laminar sinuously bent streaks is studied for the plane Couette flow at Re=500 in a nearly minimal box and for the Blasius boundary layer at Re_d*= 700. The initial perturbations are nonlinearly saturated streamwise streaks of amplitude AU perturbed with sinuous perturbations of amplitude AW. The local boundary of the basin of attraction of the linearly stable laminar flow is computed by bisection and projected in the AU – AW plane providing a well defined critical curve. Different streak transition scenarios are seen to correspond to different regions of the critical curve. The modal instability of the streaks is responsible for transition for AU ~ 25%–27% for the considered flows, where sinuous perturbations of amplitude below AW ~ 1%–2% are sufficient to counteract the streak viscous dissipation and induce breakdown. The critical amplitude of the sinuous perturbations increases when the streamwise streak amplitude is decreased. With secondary perturbations amplitude AW ~ 4%, breakdown is induced on stable streamwise streaks with AU ~ 13%, following the secondary transient growth scenario first examined by Schoppa and Hussain [J. Fluid Mech. 453, 57 (2002)]. A cross-over, where the critical amplitude of the sinuous perturbation becomes larger than the amplitude of streamwise streaks, is observed for streaks of small amplitude AU < 5%–6%. In this case, the transition is induced by an initial transient amplification of streamwise vortices, forced by the decaying sinuous mode. This is followed by the growth of the streaks and final breakdown. The shape of the critical AU – AW curve is very similar for Couette and boundary layer flows and seems to be relatively insensitive to the nature of the edge states on the basin boundary. The shape of this critical curve indicates that the stability of streamwise streaks should always be assessed in terms of both the streak amplitude and the amplitude of spanwise velocity perturbations

On the relevance of Reynolds stresses in resolvent analyses of turbulent wall-bounded flows

The ability of linear stochastic response analysis to estimate coherent motions is investigated in turbulent channel flow at friction Reynolds number Re$_\tau$ = 1007. The analysis is performed for spatial scales characteristic of buffer-layer and large-scale motions by separating the contributions of different temporal frequencies. Good agreement between the measured spatio-temporal power spectral densities and those estimated by means of the resolvent is found when the effect of turbulent Reynolds stresses, modelled with an eddy-viscosity associated to the turbulent mean flow, is included in the resolvent operator. The agreement is further improved when the flat forcing power spectrum (white noise) is replaced with a power spectrum matching the measures. Such a good agreement is not observed when the eddy-viscosity terms are not included in the resolvent operator. In this case, the estimation based on the resolvent is unable to select the right peak frequency and wall-normal location of buffer-layer motions. Similar results are found when comparing truncated expansions of measured streamwise velocity power spectral densities based on a spectral proper orthogonal decomposition to those obtained with optimal resolvent modes

Overlap/Domain-wall reweighting

We investigate the eigenvalues of nearly chiral lattice Dirac operators constructed with five-dimensional implementations. Allowing small violation of the Ginsparg-Wilson relation, the HMC simulation is made much faster while the eigenvalues are not significantly affected. We discuss the possibility of reweighting the gauge configurations generated with domain-wall fermions to those of exactly chiral lattice fermions.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, presented at the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2013), 29 July-3 August 2013, Mainz, German

Evaluation of the energy utilization index in sheep milk cooling systems

The energy consumption of sheep milk cooling systems (MCSs) was quantified in this study to provide original information filling a literature gap on the impact of sheep milk cooling on the energy and economic balance in dairy farms. Performance and energy monitoring tests were conducted simultaneously on 22 MCSs in Sardinia (Italy). The results determined the cooling time as a function of the performance class and number of milkings. The Energy Utilization Index (EUI) was applied to measure the energy required to cool down the milk and estimate the incidence on its price. The average EUI was 1.76 kWh 100 L−1 for two-milkings and 2.43 kWh 100 L−1 for four-milkings MCSs, whereas the CO2 emissions ranged from 998 to 1378 g CO2 100 L−1 for two- and four-milkings MCSs, respectively. The estimated energy consumption for the storage of refrigerated sheep milk was 0.12 kWh 100 L−1. The malfunctioning MCSs averagely consumed 31% more energy than regular systems. The energy cost for cooling accounted for 0.61% on the current sheep milk price in Italy. Based on the analysis, the reported EUI values can be used as a preliminary indicator of the regular operation of MCSs

A system for monitoring NO2 emissions from biomass burning by using GOME and ATSR-2 data

In this paper, we propose a system for monitoring abnormal NO2 emissions in troposphere by using remote-sensing sensors. In particular, the system aims at estimating the amount of NO2 resulting from biomass burning by exploiting the synergies between the GOME and the ATSR-2 sensors mounted on board of the ERS-2 satellite. Two different approaches to the estimation of NO2 are proposed: the former, which is the simplest one, assumes a linear relationship between the GOME and ATSR-2 measurements and the NO2 concentration. The latter exploits a nonlinear and nonparametric method based on a radial basis function (RBF) neural network. The architecture of such a network is defined in order to retrieve the values of NO2 concentration on the basis of the GOME and ATSR-2 measurements, as well as of other ancillary input parameters. Experimental results, obtained on a real data set, confirm the effectiveness of the proposed system, which represents a promising tool for operational applications