Fast and robust computation of coherent Lagrangian vortices on very large two-dimensional domains

Abstract

We describe a new method for computing coherent Lagrangian vortices in two-dimensional flows according to any of the following approaches: black-hole vortices [Haller & Beron-Vera, 2013], objective Eulerian Coherent Structures (OECSs) [Serra & Haller, 2016], material barriers to diffusive transport [Haller et al., 2018, Haller et al., 2019], and constrained diffusion barriers [Haller et al., 2019]. The method builds on ideas developed previously in [Karrasch et al., 2015], but our implementation alleviates a number of shortcomings and allows for the fully automated detection of such vortices on unprecedentedly challenging real-world flow problems, for which specific human interference is absolutely infeasible. Challenges include very large domains and/or parameter spaces. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method in dealing with such challenges on two test cases: first, a parameter study of a turbulent flow, and second, computing material barriers to diffusive transport in the global ocean.

arXiv comment25 pages, 10 figures (partially of very low quality due to size constraint by arxiv.org), postprint

References in corpus (2)

• Coherent Lagrangian vortices: The black holes of turbulence
• A Spectral Clustering Approach to Lagrangian Vortex Detection

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