Topographic Form Drag on Tides and Low-Frequency Flow: Observations of Nonlinear Lee Waves over a Tall Submarine Ridge near Palau

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 1489-1507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnar Voet ◽  
Matthew H. Alford ◽  
Jennifer A. MacKinnon ◽  
Jonathan D. Nash

AbstractTowed shipboard and moored observations show internal gravity waves over a tall, supercritical submarine ridge that reaches to 1000 m below the ocean surface in the tropical western Pacific north of Palau. The lee-wave or topographic Froude number, Nh0/U0 (where N is the buoyancy frequency, h0 the ridge height, and U0 the farfield velocity), ranged between 25 and 140. The waves were generated by a superposition of tidal and low-frequency flows and thus had two distinct energy sources with combined amplitudes of up to 0.2 m s−1. Local breaking of the waves led to enhanced rates of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy reaching above 10−6 W kg−1 in the lee of the ridge near topography. Turbulence observations showed a stark contrast between conditions at spring and neap tide. During spring tide, when the tidal flow dominated, turbulence was approximately equally distributed around both sides of the ridge. During neap tide, when the mean flow dominated over tidal oscillations, turbulence was mostly observed on the downstream side of the ridge relative to the mean flow. The drag exerted by the ridge on the flow, estimated to for individual ridge crossings, and the associated power loss, thus provide an energy sink both for the low-frequency ocean circulation and the tidal flow.

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 269-315
Author(s):  
J. P. McHugh

Abstract. Weakly nonlinear internal gravity waves are treated in a two-layer fluid with a set of nonlinear Schrodinger equations. The layers have a sharp interface with a jump in buoyance frequency approximately modelling the tropopause. The waves are periodic in the horizontal but modulated in the vertical and Boussinesq flow is assumed. The equation governing the incident wave packet is directly coupled to the equation for the reflected packet, while the equation governing transmitted waves is only coupled at the interface. Solutions are obtained numerically. The results indicate that the waves create a mean flow that is strong near and underneath the interface, and discontinuous at the interface. Furthermore, the mean flow has an oscillatory component with a vertical wavelength that decreases as the wave packet interacts with the interface.


2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. McHugh

Abstract. Weakly nonlinear internal gravity waves are treated in a two-layer fluid with a set of nonlinear Schrodinger equations. The layers have a sharp interface with a jump in buoyancy frequency approximately modeling the tropopause. The waves are periodic in the horizontal but modulated in the vertical and Boussinesq flow is assumed. The equation governing the incident wave packet is directly coupled to the equation for the reflected packet, while the equation governing transmitted waves is only coupled at the interface. Solutions are obtained numerically. The results indicate that the waves create a mean flow that is strong near and underneath the interface, and discontinuous at the interface. Furthermore, the mean flow has an oscillatory component that can contaminate the wave envelope and has a vertical wavelength that decreases as the wave packet interacts with the interface.


Internal gravity waves generated as standing lee waves by the flow, V , of a uniformly stratified fluid over small-scale topography on an inclined slope are examined in the particular case in which the flow is parallel to the mean slope isobaths. Attention is given to the magnitude and direction of the energy flux and to its dependence on Vl / N , α and β , where l is the wavenumber of the topography, N is the buoyancy frequency of the fluid, α is the mean slope and β defines the orientation of the two-dimensional topography on the slope. In general there is a greater probability of energy transfer towards shallow water, but in particular regions the direction of the flux depends on the orientation of the topography on the slope. For a given scale of topography and for fixed longslope current, V , and stratification, N , the drag associated with the lee waves is greatest when β = 0 (when the topography is oriented normal to the mean slope isobaths) and it can be as large as the turbulent stress on the sea bed. The lee waves may induce large variations in the currents on the sea surface. It is found that although stationary lee waves may be formed over sloping topography, the waves reflected at the sea surface may subsequently be scattered from the topography to produce waves that propagate in the mean flow.


2012 ◽  
Vol 695 ◽  
pp. 199-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. Goldstein ◽  
Adrian Sescu ◽  
M. Z. Afsar

AbstractIt is now well-known that there is an exact formula relating the far-field jet noise spectrum to the convolution product of a propagator (that accounts for the mean flow interactions) and a generalized Reynolds stress autocovariance tensor (that accounts for the turbulence fluctuations). The propagator depends only on the mean flow and an adjoint vector Green’s function for a particular form of the linearized Euler equations. Recent numerical calculations of Karabasov, Bogey & Hynes (AIAA Paper 2011-2929) for a Mach 0.9 jet show use of the true non-parallel flow Green’s function rather than the more conventional locally parallel flow result leads to a significant increase in the predicted low-frequency sound radiation at observation angles close to the downstream jet axis. But the non-parallel flow appears to have little effect on the sound radiated at $9{0}^{\ensuremath{\circ} } $ to the downstream axis. The present paper is concerned with the effects of non-parallel mean flows on the adjoint vector Green’s function. We obtain a low-frequency asymptotic solution for that function by solving a very simple second-order hyperbolic equation for a composite dependent variable (which is directly proportional to a pressure-like component of this Green’s function and roughly corresponds to the strength of a monopole source within the jet). Our numerical calculations show that this quantity remains fairly close to the corresponding parallel flow result at low Mach numbers and that, as expected, it converges to that result when an appropriately scaled frequency parameter is increased. But the convergence occurs at progressively higher frequencies as the Mach number increases and the supersonic solution never actually converges to the parallel flow result in the vicinity of a critical- layer singularity that occurs in that solution. The dominant contribution to the propagator comes from the radial derivative of a certain component of the adjoint vector Green’s function. The non-parallel flow has a large effect on this quantity, causing it (and, therefore, the radiated sound) to increase at subsonic speeds and decrease at supersonic speeds. The effects of acoustic source location can be visualized by plotting the magnitude of this quantity, as function of position. These ‘altitude plots’ (which represent the intensity of the radiated sound as a function of source location) show that while the parallel flow solutions exhibit a single peak at subsonic speeds (when the source point is centred on the initial shear layer), the non-parallel solutions exhibit a double peak structure, with the second peak occurring about two potential core lengths downstream of the nozzle. These results are qualitatively consistent with the numerical calculations reported in Karabasov et al. (2011).


2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (23) ◽  
pp. 9332-9349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Wu ◽  
Zhiping Wen ◽  
Renguang Wu

Abstract Part I of this study examined the modulation of the monsoon trough (MT) on tropical depression (TD)-type–mixed Rossby–gravity (MRG) and equatorial Rossby (ER) waves over the western North Pacific based on observations. This part investigates the interaction of these waves with the MT through a diagnostics of energy conversion that separates the effect of the MT on TD–MRG and ER waves. It is found that the barotropic conversion associated with the MT is the most important mechanism for the growth of eddy energy in both TD–MRG and ER waves. The large rotational flows help to maintain the rapid growth and tilted horizontal structure of the lower-tropospheric waves through a positive feedback between the wave growth and horizontal structure. The baroclinic conversion process associated with the MT contributes a smaller part for TD–MRG waves, but is of importance comparable to barotropic conversion for ER waves as it can produce the tilted vertical structure. The growth rates of the waves are much larger during strong MT years than during weak MT years. Numerical experiments are conducted for an idealized MRG or ER wave using a linear shallow-water model. The results confirm that the monsoon background flow can lead to an MRG-to-TD transition and the ER wave amplifies along the axis of the MT and is more active in the strong MT state. Those results are consistent with the findings in Part I. This indicates that the mean flow of the MT provides a favorable background condition for the development of the waves and acts as a key energy source.


Author(s):  
Sahib Singh Chawla

The laminar boundary layer on a magnetized plate, when the magnetic field oscillates in magnitude about a constant non-zero mean, is analysed. For low-frequency fluctuations the solution is obtained by a series expansion in terms of a frequency parameter, while for high frequencies the flow pattern is of the ‘skin-wave’ type unaffected by the mean flow. In the low-frequency range, the phase lead and the amplitude of the skin-friction oscillations increase at first and then decrease to their respective ‘skin-wave’ values. On the other hand the phase angle of the surface current decreases from 90° to 45° and its amplitude increases with frequency.


2016 ◽  
Vol 788 ◽  
pp. 521-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. R. Joel Sundstrom ◽  
Berhanu G. Mulu ◽  
Michel J. Cervantes

Wall shear stress measurements employing a hot-film sensor along with laser Doppler velocimetry measurements of the axial and tangential velocity and turbulence profiles in a pulsating turbulent pipe flow are presented. Time-mean and phase-averaged results are derived from measurements performed at pulsation frequencies ${\it\omega}^{+}={\it\omega}{\it\nu}/\bar{u}_{{\it\tau}}^{2}$ over the range of 0.003–0.03, covering the low-frequency, intermediate and quasi-laminar regimes. In addition to the base case of a single pulsation imposed on the mean flow, the study also investigates the flow response when two pulsations are superimposed simultaneously. The measurements from the base case show that, when the pulsation belongs to the quasi-laminar regime, the oscillating flow tends towards a laminar state in which the velocity approaches the purely viscous Stokes solution with a low level of turbulence. For ${\it\omega}^{+}<0.006$, the oscillating flow is turbulent and exhibits a region with a logarithmic velocity distribution and a collapse of the turbulence intensities, similar to the time-averaged counterparts. In the low-frequency regime, the oscillating wall shear stress is shown to be directly proportional to the Stokes length normalized in wall units $l_{s}^{+}~(=\sqrt{2/{\it\omega}^{+}})$, as predicted by quasi-steady theory. The base case measurements are used as a reference when evaluating the data from the double-frequency case and the oscillating quantities are shown to be close to superpositions from the base case. The previously established view that the time-averaged quantities are unaffected by the imposition of small-amplitude pulsed unsteadiness is shown to hold also when two pulsations are superposed on the mean flow.


2012 ◽  
Vol 699 ◽  
pp. 320-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Malm ◽  
Philipp Schlatter ◽  
Dan S. Henningson

AbstractDominant frequencies and coherent structures are investigated in a turbulent, three-dimensional and separated diffuser flow at $\mathit{Re}= 10\hspace{0.167em} 000$ (based on bulk velocity and inflow-duct height), where mean flow characteristics were first studied experimentally by Cherry, Elkins and Eaton (Intl J. Heat Fluid Flow, vol. 29, 2008, pp. 803–811) and later numerically by Ohlsson et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 650, 2010, pp. 307–318). Coherent structures are educed by proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of the flow, which together with time probes located in the flow domain are used to extract frequency information. The present study shows that the flow contains multiple phenomena, well separated in frequency space. Dominant large-scale frequencies in a narrow band $\mathit{St}\equiv fh/ {u}_{b} \in [0. 0092, 0. 014] $ (where $h$ is the inflow-duct height and ${u}_{b} $ is the bulk velocity), yielding time periods ${T}^{\ensuremath{\ast} } = T{u}_{b} / h\in [70, 110] $, are deduced from the time signal probes in the upper separated part of the diffuser. The associated structures identified by the POD are large streaks arising from a sinusoidal oscillating motion in the diffuser. Their individual contributions to the total kinetic energy, dominated by the mean flow, are, however, small. The reason for the oscillating movement in this low-frequency range is concluded to be the confinement of the flow in this particular geometric set-up in combination with the high Reynolds number and the large separated zone on the top diffuser wall. Based on this analysis, it is shown that the bulk of the streamwise root mean square (r.m.s.) value arises due to large-scale motion, which in turn can explain the appearance of two or more peaks in the streamwise r.m.s. value. The weak secondary flow present in the inflow duct is shown to survive into the diffuser, where it experiences an imbalance with respect to the upper expanding corners, thereby giving rise to the asymmetry of the mean separated region in the diffuser.


2015 ◽  
Vol 782 ◽  
pp. 178-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Le Dizès

In this work, we provide a viscous solution of the wave field generated by librating a disk (harmonic oscillation of the rotation rate) in a stably stratified rotating fluid. The zonal flow (mean flow correction) generated by the nonlinear interaction of the wave field is also calculated in the weakly nonlinear framework. We focus on the low dissipative limit relevant for geophysical applications and for which the wave field and the zonal flow exhibit generic features (Ekman scaling, universal structures, etc.). General expressions are obtained which depend on the disk radius $a^{\ast }$, the libration frequency ${\it\omega}^{\ast }$, the rotation rate ${\it\Omega}^{\ast }$ of the frame, the buoyancy frequency $N^{\ast }$ of the fluid, its kinematic diffusion ${\it\nu}^{\ast }$ and its thermal diffusivity ${\it\kappa}^{\ast }$. When the libration frequency is in the inertia-gravity frequency interval ($\min ({\it\Omega}^{\ast },N^{\ast })<{\it\omega}^{\ast }<\max ({\it\Omega}^{\ast },N^{\ast })$), the presence of conical internal shear layers is observed in which the spatial structures of the harmonic response and of the mean flow correction are provided. At the point of focus of these internal shear layers on the rotation axis, the largest amplitudes are obtained: the angular velocity of the harmonic response and the mean flow correction are found to be $O({\it\varepsilon}E^{-1/3})$ and $({\it\varepsilon}^{2}E^{-2/3})$ respectively, where ${\it\varepsilon}$ is the libration amplitude and $E={\it\nu}^{\ast }/({\it\Omega}^{\ast }a^{\ast 2})$ is the Ekman number. We show that the solution in the internal shear layers and in the focus region is at leading order the same as that generated by an oscillating source of axial flow localized at the edge of the disk (oscillating Dirac ring source).


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