The entrainment hypothesis – 80 years old and still going strong

The entrainment hypothesis states that the mean inflow velocity across the boundary of a turbulent flow is proportional to a characteristic velocity of the flow. Proposed by G. I. Taylor approximately 80 years ago, it is still a common model of turbulence closure widely used in environmental enginee...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of fluid mechanics 2024-11, Vol.1000, Article F2
Main Author: Cenedese, Claudia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Convective clouds
Dense water
Entrainment
Environmental engineering
Fluid flow
Fluid mechanics
Focus on Fluids
General circulation models
Geophysical fluids
Hypotheses
Inflow
Interfaces
JFM Volume 1000
Lava
Magma
Magma chambers
Mathematical models
Ocean currents
Oceanic turbulence
Plumes
Turbidity
Turbidity currents
Turbulence
Turbulent flow
Velocity
Volcanic eruptions
Volcanoes
Water currents
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Summary:The entrainment hypothesis states that the mean inflow velocity across the boundary of a turbulent flow is proportional to a characteristic velocity of the flow. Proposed by G. I. Taylor approximately 80 years ago, it is still a common model of turbulence closure widely used in environmental engineering and geophysical fluid mechanics. Although it is a very simple concept and mathematical model, it has proven to be able to predict the entrainment in a variety of geophysical flows, e.g. convective clouds and plumes from erupting volcanoes in the atmosphere; dense water overflows and turbidity currents in the ocean; magma injection in a magma chamber in the interior of the Earth, to name just a few. In a seminal paper, Turner (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 173, 1986, pp. 431–471) presents a variety of laboratory and geophysical flows to illustrate the success of the entrainment hypothesis and discusses why such a simple hypothesis works so well even when the original assumptions are no longer valid.
ISSN:0022-1120
1469-7645
DOI:10.1017/jfm.2024.862