The Evolution and Decay of Natural Scale Tornados from Wind Shear Instability
摘要
In orderNatural scale simulations to gain further insight intoWind shear tornadoTornado genesis and dissipation, a previously proposed wind shearWind shear model is extended to include other forms of initiation that demonstrate the robustness of the initiation model. Computational fluid dynamics (CFDComputational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)) simulations are performed on the scale of natural tornados, and realistic boundary conditions obtained from atmospheric properties are used in the transient simulations. A 600 m diameter, 600 m high, cylindrical computational domain was used in the simulations. The wall model LESLarge Eddy Simulation (LES) and SST-kω turbulenceTurbulence models were implemented for comparison of their suitability for tornadoTornado simulations. The results show that the initial instability transforms into a tornadoTornado-like flow field, which intensify with time and creates an updraft. Starting with the wind shearWind shear model at time t = 0, the flow field gradually transitions to a highly three-dimensional pattern consisting of vortices of different sizes, shapes and orientations. Simulations with vastly diverse conditions for the specific wind shearWind shear model, mesh size, and turbulenceTurbulence model result in the flow field asymptotically reaching a state with similar global features, demonstrating the robustness of the reported simulations. The results show numerous features of tornadoTornado behavior not observed in previous studies.