Theoretical and Natural Science

- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences


Theoretical and Natural Science

Vol. 9, 13 November 2023


Open Access | Article

An experimental investigation on salt-finger convection

Sijie Wang * 1 , Chang Liu 2
1 Shanghai United International School Gubei Campus
2 University of California

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Theoretical and Natural Science, Vol. 9, 1-13
Published 13 November 2023. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by EWA Publishing
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Citation Sijie Wang, Chang Liu. An experimental investigation on salt-finger convection. TNS (2023) Vol. 9: 1-13. DOI: 10.54254/2753-8818/9/20240701.

Abstract

This work investigates the vertical and horizontal characteristic velocities of salt-finger convection over different density ratios by experimentally adding various concentrations of salty, hot water into cold, fresh water in a water tank. salt fingers are visualized by dye and its displacement over time is obtained by recording and analysing video. These experiments effectively generate the phenomena resembling salt-finger micro-structure in the ocean. The vertical velocity is significantly increased by lowering the density ratio corresponding to a larger salinity difference between the top and bottom showing a stronger destabilizing effect. Tilted fingers that resemble the experimental and oceanography observations are also observed. We also observe a non-zero horizontal velocity implying the presence of staircases. Finger widths obtained from the experiments are compared with that predicted from the linear stability analysis, which is within the same order of magnitude.

Keywords

salt-finger convection, experimental investigation, linear stability analysis

References

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Data Availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computing Innovation and Applied Physics
ISBN (Print)
978-1-83558-129-2
ISBN (Online)
978-1-83558-130-8
Published Date
13 November 2023
Series
Theoretical and Natural Science
ISSN (Print)
2753-8818
ISSN (Online)
2753-8826
DOI
10.54254/2753-8818/9/20240701
Copyright
13 November 2023
Open Access
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Copyright © 2023 EWA Publishing. Unless Otherwise Stated