Modelling turbulent fluxes due to thermal convection in rectilinear shearing flow

Abstract

We revisit a phenomenological description of turbulent thermal convection along the lines proposed originally by Gough (1965) in which eddies grow solely by extracting energy from the unstably stratified mean state and are subsequently destroyed by internal shear instability. This work is part of an ongoing investigation for finding a procedure to calculate the turbulent fluxes of heat and momentum in the presence of a shearing background flow in stars.

2 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in IAU Symposium 271 "Astrophysical Dynamics: From Galaxies to Stars", Nice, 2010