Large-scale vorticity generation by breakers in shallow and deep water

Water wave breaking is of considerable importance in the transfer of momentum, and in other transfers, between the atmosphere and oceans. Typically breaking occurs on deep water as events that have finite duration and finite spatial extent. Near shore lines most of the water motions are dominated by breaking waves. Recent work on the generation of vorticity by breaking waves and bores in the surf zone on beaches is considered and typical vortical structures are briefly discussed. Consideration of deep water breaking leads to the proposal that the end result of a breaking event in deep water may be a coherent structure within the resulting current field. Such a structure is topologically equivalent to half a vortex ring.     

Vortex motion in a rotating barotropic fluid layer

To study vortex motion and the mechanisms of geostrophic adjustment (i.e. the equilibrium between pressure gradient and Coriolis force, which leads to the weakening of inertio-gravity waves) in large scale geophysical flows, we simulate the dynamics of a shallow-water layer in uniform rotation, without any forcing other than the initial injection of energy and potential enstrophy. Such a flow generates inertio-gravity waves which interact with the rotational eddies. We found that both inertio-gravity waves and rotation reduce the non-linear interactions between vortices, namely the condensation of the vorticity field into isolated coherent vortices, corresponding to the inverse rotational energy cascade, and the associated production of vorticity filaments, due to the direct potential enstrophy cascade. Rotation also inhibits the direct inertio-gravitational energy cascade for scales larger than the Rossby deformation radius. Therefore, if inertio-gravity waves are initially excited at large enough scales, they will remain trapped there due to rotation and there will be no geostrophic adjustment. On the contrary, if inertio-gravity waves are only present at scales smaller than the Rossby deformation radius, which are insensitive to the effect of rotation, they will non-linearly interact and cascade towards the dissipative scales, leaving the flow in geostrophic equilibrium.     

Godunov‐type adaptive grid model of wave–current interaction at cuspate beaches

This paper presents a second‐order accurate Godunov‐type numerical scheme for depth‐ and period‐averaged wave–current interaction. A flux Jacobian is derived for the wave conservation equations and its eigensystem determined, enabling Roe's approximate Riemann solver to be used to evaluate convective fluxes. Dynamically adaptive quadtree grids are used to focus on local hydrodynamic features, where sharp gradients occur in the flow variables. Adaptation criteria based on depth‐averaged vorticity, wave‐height gradient, wave steepness and the magnitude of velocity gradients are found to produce accurate solutions for nearshore circulation at a half‐sinusoidal beach. However, the simultaneous combination of two or more separate criteria produces numerical instability and interference unless all criteria are satisfied for mesh depletion. Simulations of wave–current interaction at a multi‐cusped beach match laboratory data from the United Kingdom Coastal Research Facility (UKCRF). A parameter study demonstrates the sensitivity of nearshore flow patterns to changes in relative cusp height, angle of wave incidence, bed roughness, offshore wave height and assumed turbulent eddy viscosity. Only a small deviation from normal wave incidence is required to initiate a meandering longshore current. Nearshore circulation patterns are highly dependent on the offshore wave height. Reduction of the assumed eddy viscosity parameter causes the primary circulation cells for normally incident waves to increase in strength whilst producing rip‐like currents cutting diagonally across the surf zone. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Baroclinic vortex sheet production by shocks and expansion waves

Vortex sheet production by shocks and expansion waves refracting at a density discontinuity was examined and compared using an analytical solution and numerical simulations. The analytical solution showed that with a small exception, vortex sheet strength is generally stronger in fast/slow shock refractions. In contrast, expansion waves generated a stronger vortex sheet in slow/fast refractions. This difference results in larger vorticity deposited by shocks in fast/slow refractions and by expansion waves in slow/fast refractions. Shock refractions become irregular and the analytical solution fails when either incident, transmitted or reflected shock, exceeded the angle limit for an attached shock. To investigate vortex sheet production outside the range of analytical solutions and to verify the applicability of the planar-interface analytical solution to a curved interface, shock refraction through a sinusoidal interface was numerically simulated in the shock frame of reference. It is found that variation in the local incidence angle along the curved interface creates pressure waves that affect the level of deposited vorticity. This contributes to the difference between predictions from local analysis and numerical computation. Furthermore, an interesting behavior of the shock and expansion wave-deposited vorticity in supersonic ramp flow was discovered. When the high- and low-density streams were swapped, while keeping the incident flow Mach numbers constant, a vortex sheet of equal magnitude but of opposite sign was generated.     

Velocity field after wave breaking

The velocity field in breaking water waves is considered in this paper. A numerical simulation describes in detail the transition from a primary overturning and consequent rebounding jets into a bore front, where the vorticity in the coherent large‐scale eddy structures devolves into turbulence. Spatial changes in the frequency spectra of the kinetic energy and the enstrophy are associated with the production, transport and dissipation of the Reynolds stress and the various wave and turbulent mixing length scales. Mean velocity fields and the wave and kinetic energy in a surf zone are evaluated. Fourier and wavelet spectral analysis is applied to study both the surface elevation and energy changes, and the distinction that must be made between spilling and plunging breakers is clarified in this paper. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flow around impulsively started square prisms

The flow around square and diamond prisms and a circular cylinder impulsively set into motion was studied experimentally using the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. The experiments were conducted in water in an X-Y towing tank for Reynolds numbers from Re=200-1000. The temporal development of the near-wake recirculation zone, and its pair of primary eddies, was examined from the initial start until the wake became asymmetric, at a dimensionless elapsed time of t^?=4 or 5. For both bodies, the length of the recirculation zone, the streamwise location of the primary eddies, and the strength of the primary eddies increased with time following the impulsive start, while the cross-stream spacing of the eddy centres remained nearly constant. The recirculation zones of the square and diamond prisms were longer than that of the impulsively started circular cylinder. For t^?>2, the primary eddy strength, maximum vorticity, and cross-stream spacing of the primary eddies, were the same for both the square prism and circular cylinder. The diamond prism had the strongest primary eddies and highest maximum values of vorticity. A comparison of recirculation zone length data for impulsively started bluff bodies of six different cross-sections illustrated the effects of afterbody and forebody shape, with the normal flat plate (no afterbody and no forebody) having the longest recirculation zone and the circular cylinder (rounded afterbody and rounded forebody) having the shortest recirculation zone.     

Attenuation of weak shock waves along pseudo-perforated walls

In order to attenuate weak shock waves in ducts, effects of pseudo-perforated walls were investigated. Pseudo-perforated walls are defined as wall perforations having a closed cavity behind it. Shock wave diffraction and reflection created by these perforations were visualized in a shock tube by using holographic interferometer, and also by numerical simulation. Along the pseudo-perforated wall, an incident shock wave attenuates and eventually turns into a sound wave. Due to complex interactions of the incident shock wave with the perforations, the overpressure behind it becomes non-uniform and its peak value can locally exceed that behind the undisturbed incident shock wave. However, its pressure gradient monotonically decreases with the shock wave propagation. Effects of these pseudo-perforated walls on the attenuation of weak shock waves generated in high speed train tunnels were studied in a 1/250-scaled train tunnel simulator. It is concluded that in order to achieve a practically effective suppression of the tunnel sonic boom the length of the pseudo-perforation section should be sufficiently long. Received 23 June 1997 / Accepted 16 September 1997     

Short crested wave–current forces around a large vertical circular cylinder

An analytical solution for the diffraction of short crested incident wave along positive x-axis direction on a large circular cylinder with uniform current is derived. The important influences of currents on wave frequency, water run-up, wave force, inertia and drag coefficients on the cylinder profiles are investigated for short-crested incident wave. Based on the numerical results, we find wave frequency of short crested wave system is affected by incident angle and the strength of the currents. The wave frequency increases or decreases with increasing current speed following or opposing wave propagating direction. It shows that the effects of current speeds, current directions on water run-up on the circular cylinder with different radius for different wave numbers are very conspicuous when the incident wave changes from long crested plane waves to short-crested waves. With the increase of current speed, the water run-up on the cylinder becomes more and more high, and will exceed that of long crested plane wave and short crested wave case without currents even though the current speed is small. The total wave loads, inertia coefficient and drag coefficient exerted on a cylinder with currents would be larger compared to the wave loads exerted pure short-crested waves. Therefore, ocean engineers should consider the short crested wave–current load on marine constructs carefully.     

Vortex shedding around a near-wall circular cylinder induced by a solitary wave

This study developed a two-dimensional generalized vortex method to analyze the shedding of vortices and the hydrodynamic forces resulting from a solitary wave passing over a submerged circular cylinder placed near a flat seabed. Numerical results for validation are compared with other numerical and experimental results, and satisfactory agreement is found. A series of simulations were performed to study the effects of gap-to-diameter ratio and incident wave height on vorticity pattern as well as the forces exerted on the cylinder. The range of the heights of incident waves is from 0.3h to 0.7h, where h is the still water depth. The range of the gap-to-diameter ratios is from 0.1 to 0.8. The results indicate that the flow pattern and the pressure distribution change significantly because of the close proximity of the seabed where the vorticity flux on the seabed-side surface of the cylinder is suppressed. Placing the cylinder nearer the seabed increases the drag and the positive lift on the cylinder. When the gap-to-diameter ratio increases, the pattern of vortices changes because of the interaction between the main recirculation zone and the shear layers separated from the gap. The maxima of drag, lift and total force increase linearly with the height of the incident wave.     

Nonlinear interaction of a vortex pair with clean and surfactant-covered free surfaces

Two-dimensional unsteady viscous-flow problem associated with the normal incidence of a counter-rotating vortex pair on a free surface is analyzed. Effects of surface tension and insoluble surfactants on the generation of free-surface vorticity and surface waves are investigated. A recently developed finite-difference method based on boundary-fitted coordinates is used to solve the fully-nonlinear problem. Results show that in the absence of surfactants and at low Froude number (based on circulation strength and initial separation distance of the vortex pair), waves of short lengths are generated. However, secondary vorticity generated in this case is not strong enough to affect the outward translation of the primary vortices. At intermediate Froude number, a transient wave developing outboard of the primary vortex becomes steep, and eventually breaks because of local instability. Consequently, free-surface vorticity inhibits the outward translation of the primary vortices. Surface tension in a clean free surface dampens the steep short waves, hence also the generation of free-surface vorticity. However, variation in surface tension induced by surfactants intensifies the generation of surface vorticity, thereby causing the primary vortices to rebound. The increase in the rotational part of wave motion results in the dampening of overall free-surface deformations. However, it is found that the shear stress associated with a large gradient of surfactant concentration could cause local steepening of the short wave generated outboard of the primary vortex.     

Thin Shear Layers in High Reynolds Number Turbulence—DNS Results

Using direct numerical simulation of turbulence in a periodic box driven by homogeneous forcing, with a maximum of 4096³ grid points and Taylor micro-scale Reynolds numbers R _λ up to 1131, it is shown that there is a transition in the forms of the significant, high vorticity, intermittent structures, from isolated vortices when R _λ is less than 10² to complex thin-shear layers when R _λ exceeds about 10³. Both the distance between the layers and their widths are comparable with the integral length scale. The thickness of each of the layers is of the order of the Taylor micro-scale λ. Across the layers the velocity ‘jumps’ are of the order of the rms velocity u _o of the whole flow. Within the significant layers, elongated vortical eddies are generated, with microscale thickness ? _v ~10η???λ, with associated peak values of vorticity as large as 35ω _rms and with velocity jumps as large as 3.4u _o , where η is the Kolmogorov micro scale and ω _rms the rms vorticity. The dominant vortical eddies in the layers, which are approximately parallel to the vorticity averaged over the layers, are separated by distances of order ? _v . The close packing leads to high average energy dissipation inside the layer, as large as ten times the mean rate of energy dissipation over the whole flow. The interfaces of the layers act partly as a barrier to the fluctuations outside the layer. However, there is a net energy flux into the small scale eddies within the thin layers from the larger scale motions outside the layer.     

Direct simulation of breakdown to turbulence following oblique instability waves in a supersonic boundary layer

The late stages of transition to turbulence in a Mach two boundary layer are investigated by direct numerical simulation of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The primary instability at this Mach number consists of oblique waves, which are known to form a pattern of quasi-streamwise vortices. It is found that breakdown does not follow immediately from these vortices, which decay in intensity. The generation of new vortices is observed by following the evolution of the pressure and vorticity in the simulation, and analysed by consideration of vorticity stretching. It is found that the slight inclined and skewed nature of the quasi-streamwise vortices leads to a production of oppositely signed streamwise vorticity, which serves as a strong localised forcing of the shear layer alongside the original vortices, formed by convection and stretching of spanwise vorticity. The shear layer rolls up into many new vortices, and is followed by a sharp increase in the energy of higher frequencies and in the skin friction.     

The scattering of vorticity waves by a supersonic rectangular wing

We consider the scattering of incident vorticity waves by a rigid rectangular wing in supersonic flow, and complete the solution of the problem using the modified Wiener-Hopf technique. The new feature of this analysis is the inclusion of a finite chord and a finite span in an analytical solution, and the nature of both the unsteady lift and the far-field radiation are examined in some detail. We find in particular that for large gust sweep angles the finite span can have a significant effect on the lift distribution away from the central part of the span, and that increasing the gust sweep produces a marked reduction in the level of acoustic energy generated by the interaction.     

A study of the effect of step excrescences and free‐stream disturbances on boundary layer stability

In this work, a study of the mechanism by which free‐stream acoustic and vorticity disturbances interact with a boundary layer flow developing over a flat plate featuring a step excrescence located at a certain distance from a blunt leading edge is included. The numerical tool is a high‐fidelity implicit numerical algorithm solving for the unsteady, compressible form of the Navier–Stokes equations in a body‐fitted curvilinear coordinates and employing high‐accurate compact differencing schemes with Pade‐type filters. Acoustic and vorticity waves are generated using a source term in the momentum and energy equations, as opposed to using inflow boundary conditions, to avoid spurious waves that may propagate from boundaries. The results show that the receptivity to surface step excrescences is largely the result of an overall adverse pressure gradient posed by the step, and that the free‐stream disturbances accelerate the generation of instabilities in the downstream. As expected, it is found that the acoustic disturbance interacting with the surface imperfection is more efficient in exciting the Tollmien–Schlichting waves than the vorticity disturbance. The latter generates Tollmien–Schlichting waves that are grouped in wave packets consistent with the wavelength of the free‐stream disturbance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On time-dependent,two-layer flow over topography: II. Evolution and propagation of solitary waves

The evolution of topographically generated interfacial motion is considered in a two-layer model. A system of two non-linear equations, similar to the Boussinesq equations for shallow water waves, is derived. The consequences of the cubic non-linearity of these equations on the nature of the solitary wave solutions are explored. A dispersion relation for solitary waves implies the existence of maxima for speed and displacement in a wave. The limiting values are shown to agree with other studies. The growth of solitary and/or cnoidal waves is studied for finite pulses of displacement and for internal bores.     

Turbulent Dynamics of a Critically Reflecting Internal Gravity Wave

Results from computational fluid dynamics experiments of internal wave reflection from sloping boundaries are presented. In these experiments the incident wave lies in a plane normal to the slope. When the angle of wave energy propagation is close to the bottom slope the reflection causes wave breakdown into a quasi-periodic, turbulent boundary layer. Boundary layer energetics and vorticity dynamics are examined and indicate the importance of the three-dimensional turbulence. The boundary layer exhibits intermittent turbulence: approximately every 1.2 wave periods the boundary layer mixes energetically for a duration of about one-third of a wave period, and then it restratifies until the next mixing event. Throughout the wave cycle a strong thermal front is observed to move upslope at the phase speed of the incident waves. Simulations demonstrate that the net effects of turbulent mixing are not confined to the boundary layer, but are communicated to the interior stratified fluid by motions induced by buoyancy effects and by the wave field, resulting in progressive weakening of the background density gradient. Transition to turbulence is determined to occur at Reynolds numbers of approximately 1500, based upon the wavelength and maximum current velocity of the oncoming wave train. The boundary layer thickness depends on the Reynolds number for low Richardson numbers, with a characteristic depth of approximately one-half of the vertical wavelength of the oncoming wave. Received 21 May 1997 and accepted 14 October 1997     

Properties of vortices in the self-similar turbulent jet

Instantaneous, two-dimensional velocity measurements were conducted in the axial plane of a self-similar turbulent axisymmetric jet. The velocity fields were high-pass filtered to expose the vortical structures. An automated method was used to identify the radial and axial coordinates of the vortex centers and rotational sense, and to measure their size, circulation, vorticity, and energy. New insights into turbulent jets are obtained by plotting statistical distributions for vortex properties as functions of Reynolds number and radial position. While the probability of finding a vortex is uniform up to the edge of the jet, the strongest eddies in the high-pass filtered field occur near the jet axis. The average circulation is directly proportional to the vortex size. The Reynolds number strongly affects the average vorticity, circulation, and energy of the eddies. However, the normalized curves show a good collapse implying that the jet is indeed self-similar. Results for the left and right half-planes of the jet are also presented. Interestingly, we find that contrary to customary drawings of jet flows, a substantial number of both clockwise and counter-clockwise rotating eddies exist on both sides of the jet axis, with almost equal numbers of oppositely rotating vortices close to the jet axis. Further, the disparity in the number of oppositely rotating eddies in each half-plane increases with the eddy size. Nevertheless, these results are consistent with the well-known radial vorticity distribution of axisymmetric jets.     

Grazing incidence of short elastic waves on a slender cavity

The diffraction of high-frequency P waves incident along the axis of a slender cavity of finite length is investigated. The diffracted field can be divided into several regions. Near the cavity SV waves are generated by mode conversion but they are confined to two slanted strips on the sides of the cavity. The boundary layers along the edges of these strips are also studied. Diffraction of incident SV waves is also considered but the P waves generated by mode conversion affect only the immediate neighborhood of the cavity. Similar problems with a rigid slender inclusion are briefly discussed.     

Evolvement of tsunami waves on the continental shelves with gentle slope in the China Seas

Potential tsunami generated in the Okinawa Trench or the Manila Trench may attack the southeast coast of China. The continental shelves with extremely gentle slope in the China Seas affect the evolvement of tsunami waves. In this paper, we carry out the simulation of tsunami propagation based on the fully nonlinear and highly dispersive Boussinesq model, which could describe the nonlinearity and dispersion of water waves quite well. So the undulation characters could be well presented. In terms of the real topographies of the East China Sea and the South China Sea, we take some typical profiles to simulate the hypothetical tsunamis generated in the Okinawa Trench and the Manila Trench. Different waveforms in the near shore regions are obtained. The N-shape tsunami waves will evolve into long wave trains, undular bores or solitons near the coastal area. The numerical results of the near shore waveform provide essential conditions for the further studies of tsunami runup and inundation.