Laboratory Models of Librationally-Driven Flow in Planetary Core and Sub-Surface Oceans.

Details Laboratory Models of Librationally-Driven Flow in Planetary Core and Sub-Surface Oceans. Laboratory Models of Librationally-Driven Flow in Planetary Core and Sub-Surface Oceans.

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.5901n&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #59.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.505

Physics

Fluid Dynamics

Scientific paper

Many planetary bodies, including Mercury, Titan, Europa and the Earth's moon, undergo forced longitudinal librations.
In this study, we investigate experimentally how longitudinal librations of a planet viscously couples with its interior fluid dynamics. We focus on libration frequencies less than or equal to the planetary rotation frequency, moderate Ekman numbers (E=10-2 to 10-5) and Rossby numbers between 0.03 and 5. In addition, we model flow in three different core geometry: full sphere, rinner 0.6 router and rinner 0.9 router. Direct flow visualizations in the experiment allows us to identify 3 distinct flow regimes, the onsets of which are governed by a critical boundary layer Reynolds number, Re, and are independent of the inner core size. For Re<20; the flow remains stable in the entire volume of fluid; coupled numerical simulations show that the flow is dominated by inertial modes. For 20We estimate the boundary layer Reynolds number for the Earth's moon, Mercury, Titan and Europa to be Re=80, 450, 700 and 1200, respectively. Thus, librationaly driven turbulence may exist below Mercury's core-mantle boundary (CMB) and Titan and Europa ice-shell. In the Earth's moon, we argue that the flow below the CMB is in the laminar longitudinal roll regime.
The authors wish to the thank NASA's PG&G and PME Programs for reasearch funding (NNG0697G).

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