Postdoc on Instabilities of stratified shear flows, IRPHE, Marseille (France)

Instabilities of stratified shear flows

Post-doctoral fellowship of the Institut de Mécanique et d’Ingénierie

Aix Marseille Université

P. Le Gal, B. Favier, S. Viazzo, U. Harlander

We invite doctoral students to apply for a post-doctoral fellowship from the Institute of Mechanics and Engineering of Aix Marseille University (1 year, from October 2021 to October 2022).

https://www.univ-amu.fr/fr/public/offres-demplois-post-doctorants

Our project aims to strengthen the links that exist between the Technical University of Brandenburg (BTU) in Cottbus in Germany and Aix-Marseille University, more particularly between the IRPHE and M2P2 laboratories and the department of aerodynamics and fluid mechanics of Cottbus .

Therefore, we propose to hire a post-doctoral collaborator in order to continue our research by numerical simulations on the nonlinear dynamics of instabilities of sheared stratified flows. Two actions will be carried out simultaneously: the first on the stratified Poiseuille flow [1]. The research will be supervised by B. Favier who has already carried out the first flow simulations. Alongside this work in Marseille, missions will take place in Germany in order to share the numerical and theoretical results and to proceed with the preparations for possible modifications of the experimental set-up as well as the performance of some preliminary experiments.

The second action of this first year of work will be supervised by S. Viazzo at M2P2. This will involve performing numerical simulations of baroclinic instability [2] with vertical density gradient [3]. Missions will also take place in Cottbus in order to share the experimental results previously acquired.

We plan for 2022/2023 to continue this research with a second year of post-doctoral internship funded by BTU on its Flagship program:

https://www.b-tu.de/en/researchschool/funding-opportunities/flagship-fellowship

The research will be devoted mainly to carrying out experiments. As for the first Marseillaise year, the two types of instabilities will be studied: the Poiseuille flow will be the subject of measurement campaigns by PIV in nonlinear regimes not reached so far. In the second part of the project, the post- doctoral student will devote part of his or her time to the study of the barostrat instability [3]. In particular, he or she will compare the numerical results obtained by the simulations made at M2P2 and the measurements made at Cottbus recently or during new measurement campaigns that he or she will carry out under conditions which will have been specified by the results of the numerical calculations. U. Harlander will supervise this experimental research.

[1] Le Gal, P., Harlander, U., Borcia, I., Le Dizès, S., Chen, J., & Favier, B. (2021). Instability of vertically stratified horizontal plane Poiseuille flow. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 907.R1

[2] Th. v. Larcher, S. Viazzo, U. Harlander, M. Vincze, and A. Randriamampianina. Instabilities and small-scale waves within the Stewartson layers of a thermally driven rotating annulus. J. Fluid Mech., 841, 380-407, 2018.

[3] C. Rodda, I. D. Borcia, P. Le Gal, M. Vincze & U. Harlander (2018). Baroclinic, Kelvin and inertia-gravity waves in the barostrat instability experiment. Geophysical & Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics, 112 : 3, 175-206.

CONTACT (with CV and motivation letter) :

patrice.LE-GAL@univ-amu.fr
favier@irphe.univ-mrs.fr
stephane.viazzo@univ-amu.fr
haruwe@b-tu.de