Indeed, there is a similar phenomenon over land known as landspouts that are known to be laminar.
It looks like Natarajan screwed up. On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 9:07 AM, James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote: > This waterspout video seems to support the laminar hypothesis. > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN7ug1zoWWE > > > On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 10:02 AM, James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Chapter 5 (page 107) of the 2011 doctoral thesis Numerical Simulation of >> Tornado-like >> Vortices<http://vortexengine.ca/cfd/Diwakar_Natarajan_Full_thesis.pdf> by >> Diwakar Natarajan concludes that cross-winds do not affect the power >> generation capacity of the AVE, but it appears that this is only with >> respect to ambient temperature. He specifically calls for further research >> into the significance of temperature gradients with altitude. Is there any >> further work that discounts the possible cross-wind induced loss of vortex >> integrity at the altitudes required to achieve lower exhaust temperatures >> required for higher Carnot efficiency? >> >> The AVE CFD page <http://vortexengine.ca/cfd.shtml> presents a >> disagreement with Natarajan's use of turbulent mode simulation. This >> disagreement is based on behavior of physical models showing laminar flow, >> one of which was water-spouts and the other being a laboratory scale >> model. The implication is that the adjoining photograph of a laboratory >> scale model <http://www.vortexengine.ca/Physical_Models_LM-3.shtml> >> demonstrates >> a vortex that is in disagreement with Natarajan's application of turbulent >> mode simulation at high Rayleigh numbers. Is anyone aware of further >> resolution of this point of disagreement? > > >
