Remote Estimation of Turbulence Intensity Variation in Open Channels
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 146, Issue 9
Abstract
The open channel flow community has a history of using a set of universal exponential expressions to describe the vertical variation of turbulence intensity in open channel flows. All of these relationships contain an empirical coefficient that varies with the component direction (, , ). Recent laboratory experiments have demonstrated that for smooth and rough bed open channel flows, these constants are not universal but vary with the Reynolds number, bed composition, and in the presence of streamwise counter-rotating vortices and secondary flows. A robust method for the remote prediction of , and hence the vertical variation of the streamwise turbulence intensity is developed here for a wide range of flow conditions. The method uses the free-surface turbulence anisotropy as a proxy for the redistribution of vertical velocity fluctuations into surface-parallel components, enabling a correlation between the free-surface turbulence intensity and . Implications for the remote prediction of bed composition, sediment transport, and bed shear stress are discussed.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Institutes for Water Resources (Grant No. 2012NY189G). Johnson gratefully acknowledges the support of the NRC Associateship, National Sloan Foundation, the DeFrees Fellowship, and the Colman Fellowship. The authors would like to acknowledge the hard work of Tim Brock, Paul Charles, and Jack Powers in facilitating the experiments.
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Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 146 • Issue 9 • September 2020
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 11, 2019
Accepted: Jan 24, 2020
Published online: Jul 7, 2020
Published in print: Sep 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Dec 7, 2020
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