Over-reflection and instabilities in shear flows of shallow water with bottom friction

In a two-dimensional shear flow of shallow water, the bottom friction relates uniquely the spanwise profile of the depth-averaged velocity to the bottom topography. If the basic flow varies weakly in the spanwise direction, the local analysis of stability at every spanwise position gives the region of the flow parameters for which the classic hydraulic instability due to the bottom friction cannot occur. In this region, the linear analyses of the waves scattering and instability due to the lateral shear can be performed effectively by means of the frictionless linearized equations if both the bottom slope and friction are equally small.The energy of the total perturbed flow can be split into three main parts that correspond to the basic flow, small amplitude wave motion and induced mean flow. The waves can be either amplified or damped near the critical layers, where their streamwise phase velocity equals the velocity of the basic flow. Two physical mechanisms of this amplification exist. The first one is similar to that suggested by Takehiro and Hayashi for a linear frictionless shallow water flow. The incident and transmitted waves carry energy of opposite signs, which results in an increase in the amplitude of the reflected wave compared to that of the incident one. This mechanism of over-reflection operates for any combination of the flow parameters. The other mechanism is similar to Landau damping in plasma flows; it is related to the energy exchange between the waves and fluid particles at the critical layers due to the velocity synchronism. It may lead to either additional amplification or damping of the waves for different flow conditions. In particular, its significance can be reduced by stronger bottom friction. If the basic flow has uniform potential vorticity, Landau damping is negligible, and over-reflection always occurs. If the feed-back is provided by another critical layer, the net over-reflection results in the formation of trapped modes.