Implications of Reynolds Averaging for Reactive Tracers in Turbulent Flows

RANS simulations have been broadly used to investigate turbulence in the oceans and atmosphere. Within these environments there are a multitude of tracers undergoing reactions (eg. phytoplankton growth, chemical reactions). The distribution of these reactive tracers is strongly influenced by turbulent mixing. With a 50 member ensemble of two-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor induced turbulent mixing, we show that the dynamics of a reactive tracer growing according to Fisher’s equation are poorly captured by the mean. A fluctuation-dependent sink introduced by Reynolds averaging Fisher’s equation transfers concentration from the mean to the fluctuations. We compare the dynamics of the reactive tracer with those of a passive tracer. The data herein provide all metrics used to demonstrate these results. The .mat files contain the data required to reproduce all figures and the .m files are plotting scripts. The data included herein was collected from an ensemble generated with SPINS (Spectral Parallel Incompressible Navier-Stokes Solver), which can be cloned from https://git.uwaterloo.ca/SPINS/SPINS_main The data in this repository correspond to "Implications of Reynolds Averaging for Reactive Tracers in Turbulent Flows" by Legare and Stastna, 2023 (submitted). For detailed information on interpreting the data, see the associated submitted manuscript on Preprints: https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11112036