Gravity pervades the whole universe; hence buoyancy drives fluids everywhere including those in the atmospheres and interiors of planets and stars. Prime examples of such flows are mantle convection, atmospheric flows, solar convection, dynamo process, heat exchangers, airships and hot air balloons. In this book we present fundamentals and applications of thermal convection and stratified flows.Buoyancy brings in extremely rich phenomena including waves and instabilities, patterns, chaos, and turbulence. In this book we present these topics in a systematic manner. First we present a unified treatment of linear theory that yields waves and thermal instability for stably and unstably-stratified flows respectively. We extend this analysis to include rotation and magnetic field. We also describe nonlinear saturation and pattern formation in Rayleigh-Bénard convection.The second half of the book is dedicated to buoyancy-driven turbulence, both in stably-stratified flow and in thermal convection. We describe the spectral theory including energy flux and show that the thermally-driven turbulence is similar to hydrodynamic turbulence. We also describe large-scale quantities like Reynolds and Nusselt numbers, flow anisotropy, and the dynamics of flow structures, namely flow reversals. Thus, this book presents all the major aspects of the buoyancy-driven flows in a coherent manner that would appeal to advanced graduate students and researchers.

Buoyancy is one of the main forces driving flows on our planet, especially in the oceans and atmosphere. These flows range from buoyant coastal currents to dense overflows in the ocean, and from avalanches to volcanic pyroclastic flows on the Earth's surface. This book brings together contributions by leading world scientists to summarize our present theoretical, observational, experimental and modeling understanding of buoyancy-driven flows. Buoyancy-driven currents play a key role in the global ocean circulation and in climate variability through their impact on deep-water formation. Buoyancy-driven currents are also primarily responsible for the redistribution of fresh water throughout the world's oceans. This book is an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers in oceanography, geophysical fluid dynamics, atmospheric science and the wider Earth sciences who need a state-of-the-art reference on buoyancy-driven flows.

Instability of flows and their transition to turbulence are widespread phenomena in engineering and the natural environment, and are important in applied mathematics, astrophysics, biology, geophysics, meteorology, oceanography and physics as well as engineering. This is a textbook to introduce these phenomena at a level suitable for a graduate course, by modelling them mathematically, and describing numerical simulations and laboratory experiments. The visualization of instabilities is emphasized, with many figures, and in references to more still and moving pictures. The relation of chaos to transition is discussed at length. Many worked examples and exercises for students illustrate the ideas of the text. Readers are assumed to be fluent in linear algebra, advanced calculus, elementary theory of ordinary differential equations, complex variables and the elements of fluid mechanics. The book is aimed at graduate students but will also be very useful for specialists in other fields.

Jets and plumes are shear flows produced by momentum and buoyancy forces. Examples include smokestack emissions, fires and volcano eruptions, deep sea vents, thermals, sewage discharges, thermal effluents from power stations, and ocean dumping of sludge. Knowledge of turbulent mixing by jets and plumes is important for environmental control, impact and risk assessment. Turbulent Jets and Plumes introduces the fundamental concepts and develops a Lagrangian approach to model these shear flows. This theme persists throughout the text, starting from simple cases and building towards the practically important case of a turbulent buoyant jet in a density-stratified crossflow. Basic ideas are illustrated by ample use of flow visualization using the laser-induced fluorescence technique. The text includes many illustrative worked examples, comparisons of model predictions with laboratory and field data, and classroom tested problems. An interactive PC-based virtual-reality modelling software (VISJET) is also provided. Engineering and science students, researchers and practitioners may use the book both as an introduction to the subject and as a reference in hydraulics and environmental fluid mechanics.

An up-to-date comprehensive text useful for graduate students and academic researchers in the field of energy transfers in fluid flows. The initial part of the text covers discussion on energy transfer formalism in hydrodynamics and the latter part covers applications including passive scalar, buoyancy driven flows, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD), dynamo, rotating flows and compressible flows. Energy transfers among large-scale modes play a critical role in nonlinear instabilities and pattern formation and is discussed comprehensively in the chapter on buoyancy-driven flows. It derives formulae to compute Kolmogorov's energy flux, shell-to-shell energy transfers and locality. The book discusses the concept of energy transfer formalism which helps in calculating anisotropic turbulence.