In this article, we review the recent efforts of several teams that aimed at observing in the laboratory a turbulence of internal gravity waves in a density stratified fluid in the weakly non-linear regime. The common feature to these studies is that they adopted the same strategy of injecting energy in weakly non-linear waves before increasing the forcing amplitude in order to trigger a transition to a wave turbulence regime. The motivation to these works is twofold. On the one hand, it has long been proposed that the dynamics of small oceanic scales is driven by a regime of weakly non-linear internal wave turbulence, without however a definitive confirmation so far. A better understanding of the weakly non-linear internal wave turbulence thus appears as an important lever for improving the parameterization of small oceanic scales in climate models. On the other hand, the identification of valid solutions to the theory of internal gravity wave turbulence is still an open problem, and the experimental observation of this regime is therefore of great interest to guide future theoretical developments. We conclude that two features should be improved in the experiments in order to access to a genuine weakly non-linear wave turbulence in the laboratory. First, one should mitigate the finite size effects and especially prevent the concentration of the energy in wave eigenmodes of the fluid domain. Second, one should implement a significant increase of the wavelength at which the energy is injected in order to access to larger Reynolds numbers and lower flow Froude numbers and build a turbulence with well developed power law spectra while remaining in the weakly non-linear regime.
Dans cet article, nous passons en revue les efforts récents de plusieurs équipes visant à observer au laboratoire une turbulence d’ondes internes de gravité dans un fluide stratifié en densité dans le régime faiblement non-linéaire. Ces études ont en commun d’adopter la même stratégie consistant à injecter l’énergie dans des ondes faiblement non-linéaires avant d’augmenter l’amplitude du forçage afin de déclencher une transition vers un régime de turbulence d’ondes. La motivation à ces travaux est double. D’une part, il est depuis longtemps proposé que la dynamique des petites échelles océaniques soit pilotée par le régime de turbulence d’ondes internes faiblement non-linéaire, sans toutefois qu’une confirmation définitive n’ait pour l’instant pu être apportée. Une meilleure compréhension de la turbulence d’ondes internes faiblement non-linéaire apparaît ainsi comme un levier important pour améliorer la paramétrisation des petites échelles océaniques dans les modèles climatiques. D’autre part, l’identification de solutions valides à la théorie de la turbulence d’ondes internes de gravité reste un problème ouvert et l’observation expérimentale de ce régime apparaît donc d’un grand intérêt pour guider les développements théoriques. Nous concluons que deux caractéristiques doivent être améliorées dans les expériences afin d’accéder à un véritable régime de turbulence d’ondes faiblement non-linéaire au laboratoire. Il faut d’une part contrôler les effets de taille finie et en particulier empêcher la concentration de l’énergie dans les modes propres d’ondes du domaine fluide. Il convient d’autre part d’augmenter sensiblement la longueur d’onde à laquelle l’énergie est injectée afin d’accéder à des nombres de Reynolds plus élevés et des nombres de Froude plus faibles pour construire une turbulence avec des spectres en loi de puissance développés tout en restant dans un régime faiblement non linéaire.
Revised:
Accepted:
Online First:
Mot clés : Ondes internes de gravité, Fluides stratifiés, Turbulence, Océans
Pierre-Philippe Cortet 1; Nicolas Lanchon 1
CC-BY 4.0
@article{CRPHYS_2024__25_S3_A2_0,
author = {Pierre-Philippe Cortet and Nicolas Lanchon},
title = {Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory},
journal = {Comptes Rendus. Physique},
publisher = {Acad\'emie des sciences, Paris},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.5802/crphys.192},
language = {en},
note = {Online first},
}
Pierre-Philippe Cortet; Nicolas Lanchon. Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory. Comptes Rendus. Physique, Online first (2024), pp. 1-20. doi : 10.5802/crphys.192.
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