Boundary mixing in a rotating, stratified fluid

Abstract

An earlier laboratory experiment of Ivey & Corcos (1982) on boundary mixing in a stratified fluid was extended by including the effects of rotation. An axisymmetric version of the original laboratory experiments was constructed and a series of experiments conducted on a rotating table with the tank filled with salt-stratified solution. The combination of vertical mixing at the boundary and horizontal mixing by mesoscale eddies lead to the weakening of the interior density gradient. While the mechanisms were thus complex, the experiments demonstrated that the boundary-mixing process may be parameterized by a relatively simple formulation dependent upon the turbulence properties at the boundary and the tank dimensions.