Experimental Study on the Propagation and Stability of Tidal Vortices
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 145, Issue 7
Abstract
Laboratory studies of tidal vortex formation and propagation through an idealized inlet configuration are presented for various water depths over flat bathymetry. Using surface particle image velocimetry, starting-jet vortices were tracked and vortex diameter was calculated over the course of four consecutive tidal cycles. It was determined that the ratio of tidal excursion to frictional length scale is a critical parameter for determining whether the flow is advection or friction dominated, and plays a role in characterizing the vortex structure. To investigate tidal vortex stability, the tendency of instabilities to stop growing, the authors applied a variation of the shallow wake parameter equation using the vortex diameter as the length scale. Flow characterizations were further analyzed using the aspect ratio and vortex Reynolds number to evaluate , giving the degree of three-dimensional structure and two-dimensional confinement in the vortices.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Wernher Brevis for his guidance with laboratory equipment operation. Special thanks go to Dr. Gerhard Jirka for his support and allowing us to use the shallow water basin at the Institute for Hydromechanics at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, to conduct our experiments. He was very influential in the field of environmental fluid mechanics and is greatly missed. This work was supported in part by institutional grants (NA06OAR4170076, NA10OAR4170099) to the Texas Sea Grant College Program from the National Sea Grant Office, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Department of Commerce. Financial support facilitating the experiments conducted at the Institute for Hydromechanics at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, was awarded by the International Research and Education in Engineering Program (IREE) under National Science Foundation Project No. CBET-0637034.
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Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 145 • Issue 7 • July 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 31, 2018
Accepted: Dec 28, 2018
Published online: Apr 25, 2019
Published in print: Jul 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Sep 25, 2019
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