Pages 147-152
Mixing in a stratified cavity flow and its associated flow structure are investigated by numerical experiments. The computational method for stratified flows developed in the previous paper is extended to the three-dimensional cases and applied to the phenomena in which a density interface is formed by erosion of the region with density gradient and it descends by the mixing. In the two-dimensional computation the mixed layer develops slower than in the experiment, while the result in the three-dimensional computation is in good agreement with the experiment. It is found that the flow structure of streamwise vortices as observed in the visualization experiment is formed near a density interface in the computation and it enhances the mixing across the density interface by deforming the interface to the wave shape.
