Wall Plumes from Melting Ice under Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulence: Experiments and Model Comparisons

We present simultaneous planar particle image velocimetry (PIV) and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) thermometry measurements of the flow adjacent to a melting vertical ice wall that is subject to homogeneous isotropic turbulence (HIT). Experiments were conducted in a 2.4 m × 1.0 m × 0.3 m (L × H × W) water tank, with a 1 m tall, 0.3 m wide, and 0.075 m thick ice block submerged in 1 to 4^oC freshwater with and without ambient turbulence. Ambient turbulence of different intensity levels was generated using the synthetic jet array technique. Flow regimes studied include the initial buoyancy-dominated laminar convection and the final shear-dominated turbulent wall plume. Our measurements were compared to the semi-analytical theory by Wells and Worster (WW08, JFM, 2008) and found good agreement in the zero ambient turbulence case. With ambient turbulence, the WW08 theory is no longer valid as it assumes a quiescent background. To account for the imposed HIT effects on the turbulent wall plume, we have adapted the recent integral plume modelling framework in Lai et al (JFM, 2019) for free buoyant jets in HIT to the wall plume. The comparison between measured data and model predictions was found to be good.