Baroclinic Turbulence in Accelerated Inhomogeneous Flows

This talk presents an overview and recent understanding of \textit{accelerated inhomogeneous} \textit{flows} (AIFs) or shock-accelerated Richtmyer-Meshkov flows. We use the vortex paradigm and the visiometric approach. We ``project'' data to lower dimensions to quantify, validate simulations of and model phenomena involving coherent space-time events. We emphasize our recent work,\footnote{Shuang Zhang , Jian Chen and Norman J. Zabusky ``Turbulent Decay and Mixing of accelerated inhomogeneous Flows via a Feature Based Analysis'' SIAM J. Sci. Comput. $'04 $ \textbf{26,}, pp. 86--10.}$^{,}$\footnote{Shuang Zhang, Norman J. Zabusky, Gao-Zhu Peng , ``Vortex dynamics and baroclinically forced inhomogeneous turbulence~for shock - planar heavy curtain interactions'' J. of Turbulence, `05.} including vortex induced \textit{secondary baroclinic circulation generation} which yields more positive and negative circulation through intermediate times than the original shock-accelerated vortex deposition. In addition we quantify the effects of the initial \textit{thickness} of the interfacial transition layer and the ubiquity of vortex projectiles and transition to turbulence for the shock-curtain interaction.