Introduction to Focus Issue: Objective Detection of Coherent Structures

Quasi-objective coherent structure diagnostics from single trajectories

We derive measures of local material stretching and rotation that are computable from individual trajectories without reliance on other trajectories or on an underlying velocity field. Both measures are quasi-objective: they approximate objective (i.e., observer-independent) coherence diagnostics in frames satisfying a certain condition. This condition requires the trajectory accelerations to dominate the angular acceleration induced by the spatial mean vorticity. We illustrate on examples how quasi-objective coherence diagnostics highlight elliptic and hyperbolic Lagrangian coherent structures even from very sparse trajectory data.

Hyper-Objective Vortices

Almost all properties of vector fields, including magnitude, direction, λ₂ and vorticity change under arbitrary movements of the observer. This is undesirable since measurements of physical properties should ideally not depend on the way the (virtual) measurement device moves. There are some properties that are invariant under certain types of reference frame transformations: Galilean invariance (invariance under equal-speed translation) and objectivity (invariance under any smooth rotation and translation of the reference frame). In this paper, we introduce even harder conditions than objectivity: we demand invariance under any smooth similarity transformation (rotation, translation and uniform scale) as well as invariance under any smooth affine transformation of the reference frame. We show that these new hyper-objective measures allow the extraction of vortices that change their volume or deform. Further, we present a generic approach that transforms almost any vortex measure into a hyper-objective one. We apply our methods to vortex extraction in 2D and 3D vector fields, and analyze the numerical robustness, extraction time and the minimization residuals for the Galilean invariant, objective, and the two new hyper-objective approaches.

Laser-Induced Full-Matrix Ultrasonic Imaging of Complex-Shaped Objects

We present laser-induced full-matrix imaging of complex-shaped objects that combines the advantages of noncontact laser ultrasound inspection and high-contrast array imaging based on total focusing method (TFM). Full-matrix data were acquired by synthesizing a laser ultrasonic array through an alternate scanning of the generation and detection laser beams. Taking advantage of the simultaneous generation of all wave modes, surface Rayleigh waves were extracted for surface profiling, and longitudinal waves were utilized for imaging. To gain a better understanding, we analyzed the full-wave dynamics in generation, propagation, and scattering by using numerical simulations. TFM was adapted to accommodate complex surface and suppress interference from other waves, including surface waves and straightforward traveling bulk waves between emission and reception. Numerical and experimental studies on an aluminum sample with a sinusoidal surface and side-drilled holes were conducted, and results agreed well.

Vortex Interactions Subjected to Deformation Flows: A Review

Deformation flows are the flows incorporating shear, strain and rotational components. These flows are ubiquitous in the geophysical flows, such as the ocean and atmosphere. They appear near almost any salience, such as isolated coherent structures (vortices and jets) and various fixed obstacles (submerged obstacles and continental boundaries). Fluid structures subject to such deformation flows may exhibit drastic changes in motion. In this review paper, we focus on the motion of a small number of coherent vortices embedded in deformation flows. Problems involving isolated one and two vortices are addressed. When considering a single-vortex problem, the main focus is on the evolution of the vortex boundary and its influence on the passive scalar motion. Two vortex problems are addressed with the use of point vortex models, and the resulting stirring patterns of neighbouring scalars are studied by a combination of numerical and analytical methods from the dynamical system theory. Many dynamical effects are reviewed with emphasis on the emergence of chaotic motion of the vortex phase trajectories and the scalars in their immediate vicinity.

Material barriers to diffusive and stochastic transport

Observations of tracer transport in fluids generally reveal highly complex patterns shaped by an intricate network of transport barriers and enhancers. The elements of this network appear to be universal for small diffusivities, independent of the tracer and its initial distribution. Here, we develop a mathematical theory for weakly diffusive tracers to predict transport barriers and enhancers solely from the flow velocity, without reliance on diffusive or stochastic simulations. Our results yield a simplified computational scheme for diffusive transport problems, such as the estimation of salinity redistribution for climate studies and the forecasting of oil spill spreads on the ocean surface.

We seek transport barriers and transport enhancers as material surfaces across which the transport of diffusive tracers is minimal or maximal in a general, unsteady flow. We find that such surfaces are extremizers of a universal, nondimensional transport functional whose leading-order term in the diffusivity can be computed directly from the flow velocity. The most observable (uniform) transport extremizers are explicitly computable as null surfaces of an objective transport tensor. Even in the limit of vanishing diffusivity, these surfaces differ from all previously identified coherent structures for purely advective fluid transport. Our results extend directly to stochastic velocity fields and hence enable transport barrier and enhancer detection under uncertainties.

A critical comparison of Lagrangian methods for coherent structure detection

We review and test twelve different approaches to the detection of finite-time coherent material structures in two-dimensional, temporally aperiodic flows. We consider both mathematical methods and diagnostic scalar fields, comparing their performance on three benchmark examples: the quasiperiodically forced Bickley jet, a two-dimensional turbulence simulation, and an observational wind velocity field from Jupiter's atmosphere. A close inspection of the results reveals that the various methods often produce very different predictions for coherent structures, once they are evaluated beyond heuristic visual assessment. As we find by passive advection of the coherent set candidates, false positives and negatives can be produced even by some of the mathematically justified methods due to the ineffectiveness of their underlying coherence principles in certain flow configurations. We summarize the inferred strengths and weaknesses of each method, and make general recommendations for minimal self-consistency requirements that any Lagrangian coherence detection technique should satisfy.

Performance of Lagrangian descriptors and their variants in incompressible flows

The method of Lagrangian Descriptors has been applied in many different contexts, specially in geophysical flows. In this paper, we analyze their performance in incompressible flows. We construct broad families of systems where this diagnostic fails in the detection of barriers to transport. Another aim of this manuscript is to illustrate the same deficiencies in the recent diagnostic proposed by Craven and Hernández.

Objective Eulerian coherent structures

We define objective Eulerian Coherent Structures (OECSs) in two-dimensional, non-autonomous dynamical systems as the instantaneously most influential material curves. Specifically, OECSs are stationary curves of the averaged instantaneous material stretching-rate or material shearing-rate functionals. From these objective (frame-invariant) variational principles, we obtain explicit differential equations for hyperbolic, elliptic, and parabolic OECSs. As an illustration, we compute OECSs in an unsteady ocean velocity data set. In comparison to structures suggested by other common Eulerian diagnostic tools, we find OECSs to be the correct short-term cores of observed trajectory deformation patterns.