Diapycnal diffusivity, turbulent Prandtl number and mixing efficiency in Boussinesq stratified turbulence

In order that it be correctly characterized, irreversible turbulent mixing in stratified fluids must distinguish between adiabatic ‘stirring’ and diabatic ‘mixing’. Such a distinction has been formalized through the definition of a diapycnal diffusivity, K_ρ (Winters & D’Asaro, J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 317, 1996, pp. 179–193) and an appropriate mixing efficiency, E (Caulfield & Peltier, J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 413, 2000, pp. 1–47). Equivalent attention has not been paid to the definitions of a corresponding momentum diffusivity Kₘ and hence an appropriately defined turbulent Prandtl number Prₜ=Kₘ/K_ρ . In this paper, the diascalar framework of Winters & D’Asaro (1996) is first reformulated to obtain an ‘Osborn-like’ formula in which the correct definition of irreversible mixing efficiency E is shown to replace the flux Richardson number which Osborn ( J. Phys. Oceanogr. , vol. 10, 1980, pp. 83–89) assumed to characterize this efficiency. We advocate the use of this revised representation for diapycnal diffusivity since the proposed reformulation effectively removes the simplifying assumptions on which the original Osborn formula was based. We similarly propose correspondingly reasonable definitions for Kₘ and Prₜ by eliminating the reversible component of the momentum production term. To explore implications of the reformulations for both diapycnal and momentum diffusivity we employ an extensive series of direct numerical simulations (DNS) to investigate the properties of the shear-induced density-stratified turbulence that is engendered through the breaking of a freely evolving Kelvin–Helmholtz wave. The DNS results based on the proposed reformulation of K_ρ are compared with available estimations due to the mixing length model, as well as both the Osborn–Cox and the Osborn models. Estimates based upon the Osborn–Cox formulation are shown to provide the closest approximation to the diapycnal diffusivity delivered by the exact representation. Through compilation of the complete set of DNS results we explore the characteristic dependence of K_ρ on the buoyancy Reynolds number Reb as originally investigated by Shih et al. ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 525, 2005, pp. 193–214) in their idealized study of homogeneous stratified and sheared turbulence, and show that the validity of their results is only further reinforced through analysis of the turbulence produced in the more geophysically relevant Kelvin–Helmholtz wave life-cycle ansatz. In contrast to the results described by Shih et al. (2005) however, we show that, besides Reb , a vertically averaged measure of the gradient Richardson number Rib may equivalently characterize the turbulent mixing at high Reb . Based on the dominant driving processes involved in irreversible mixing, we categorize the intermediate (i.e. Reb=O(10¹-10²) ) and high (i.e. Reb>O(10²) ) range of Reb as ‘buoyancy-dominated’ and ‘shear-dominated’ mixing regimes, which together define a transition value of Rib~ 0.2 . Mixing efficiency varies non-monotonically with both Reb and Rib , with its maximum (on the order of 0.2–0.3) occurring in the ‘buoyancy-dominated’ regime. Unlike K_ρ which is very sensitive to the correct choice of E (i.e. K_ρ∝ E/(1-E) ), we show that Kₘ is almost insensitive to the choice of E (i.e. <j