For rotationally constrained convection, the Taylor–Proudman theorem enforces an organization of nonlinear flows into tall columnar or compact plume structures. While coherent structures in convection under moderate rotation are exclusively cyclonic, recent experiments for rapid rotation have revealed a transition to equal populations of cyclonic and anticyclonic structures. Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of this regime is expensive, however, and existing simulations have yet to reveal anticyclonic vortical structures. In this paper, we use a reduced system of equations for rotationally constrained convection valid in the asymptotic limit of thin columnar structures and rapid rotation to perform numerical simulation of Rayleigh–Bénard convection in an infinite layer rotating uniformly about the vertical axis. Visualization indicates the existence of cyclonic and anticyclonic vortical populations for all parameters examined. Moreover, it is found that the flow evolves through three distinct regimes with increasing Rayleigh number (Ra). For small, but supercritical Ra, the flow is dominated by a cellular system of hot and cold columns spanning the fluid layer. As Ra increases, the number density of these columns decreases, the up-and down-drafts within them strengthen and the columns develop opposite-signed ‘sleeves’ in all fields. The resulting columns are highly efficient at transporting heat across the fluid layer. In the final regime, lateral mixing plays a dominant role in the interior and the columnar structure is destroyed. However, thermal plumes are still injected and rejected from the thermal boundary layers. We identify the latter two regimes with the vortex-grid and geostrophic turbulence regimes, respectively. Within these regimes, we investigate convective heat transport (measured by the Nusselt number), mean temperature profiles, and root-mean-square profiles of the temperature, vertical velocity and vertical vorticity anomalies. For all Prandtl numbers investigated, the mean temperature saturates in a non-isothermal profile as Ra increases owing to intense lateral mixing.

We introduce the open-source ExaWind modeling and simulation environment for wind energy. The primary physics codes of ExaWind are Nalu-Wind and OpenFAST. Nalu-Wind is a wind-focused computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code that is coupled to the whole-turbine simulation code OpenFAST. The ExaWind environment was created under U.S. Department of Energy funding to achieve the highest-fidelity simulations of wind turbines and wind farms to date, with the goal of enabling disruptive changes to turbine and plant design and operation. Innovation will be gleaned through better understanding of the complex flow dynamics in wind farms, including wake evolution and the impact of wakes on downstream turbines and turbulent flow from complex terrain. High-fidelity predictive simulations employ hybrid turbulence models, geometry/boundary-layer-resolving CFD meshes, atmospheric turbulence, nonlinear structural dynamics, and fluid-structure interaction. While there is an emphasis on very high-fidelity simulations (e.g., blade resolved with full fluid-structure coupling), the ExaWind environment supports lower-fidelity modeling capabilities including actuator-line and -disk methods. Important in the development of ExaWind codes is that the codes scale well on today’s largest petascale supercomputers and on the next-generation platforms that will enable exascale computing.