The dynamics of irrotational shallow water wave turbulence forced at large scales and dissipated at small scales is investigated. First, we derive the shallow water analogue of the ‘four-fifths law’ of Kolmogorov turbulence for a third-order structure function involving velocity and displacement increments. Using this relation and assuming that the flow is dominated by shocks, we develop a simple model predicting that the shock amplitude scales as $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}d)^{1/3}$, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}$ is the mean dissipation rate and $d$ the mean distance between the shocks, and that the $p$th-order displacement and velocity structure functions scale as $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}d)^{p/3}r/d$, where $r$ is the separation. Then we carry out a series of forced simulations with resolutions up to $7680^{2}$, varying the Froude number, $F_{f}=(\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}L_{f})^{1/3}/c$, where $L_{f}$ is the forcing length scale and $c$ is the wave speed. In all simulations a stationary state is reached in which there is a constant spectral energy flux and equipartition between kinetic and potential energy in the constant flux range. The third-order structure function relation is satisfied with a high degree of accuracy. Mean energy is found to scale approximately as $E\sim \sqrt{\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}L_{f}c}$, and is also dependent on resolution, indicating that shallow water wave turbulence does not fit into the paradigm of a Richardson–Kolmogorov cascade. In all simulations shocks develop, displayed as long thin bands of negative divergence in flow visualisations. The mean distance between the shocks is found to scale as $d\sim F_{f}^{1/2}L_{f}$. Structure functions of second and higher order are found to scale in good agreement with the model. We conclude that in the weak limit, $F_{f}\rightarrow 0$, shocks will become denser and weaker and finally disappear for a finite Reynolds number. On the other hand, for a given $F_{f}$, no matter how small, shocks will prevail if the Reynolds number is sufficiently large.
Exact second-order structure-function
relationships