Time dependent hydraulic falls and trapped waves over submerged obstructions

We consider the classical problem of a free surface flowing past one or more disturbances in a channel. The fluid is assumed to be inviscid and incompressible, and the flow, irrotational. Both the effects of gravity and surface tension are considered. The stability of critical flow steady solutions, which have subcritical flow upstream of the disturbance and supercritical flow downstream, is investigated. We compute the initial steady solution using boundary integral equation techniques based on Cauchy integral formula and advance the solution forward in time using a mixed Euler-Lagrange method along with Adams-Bashforth-Moulton scheme. Both gravity and gravity-capillary critical flow solutions are found to be stable. The stability of solutions with a train of waves trapped between two disturbances is also investigated in the pure gravity and gravity-capillary cases

Exponential asymptotics and gravity waves

The problem of irrotational inviscid incompressible free-surface flow is examined in the limit of small Froude number. Since this is a singular perturbation, singularities in the flow field (or its analytic continuation) such as stagnation points, or corners in submerged objects or on rough beds, lead to a divergent asymptotic expansion, with associated Stokes lines. Recent techniques in exponential asymptotics are employed to observe the switching on of exponentially small gravity waves across these Stokes lines. As a concrete example, the flow over a step is considered. It is found that there are three possible parameter regimes, depending on whether the dimensionless step height is small, of the same order, or large compared to the square of the Froude number. Asymptotic results are derived in each case, and compared with numerical simulations of the full nonlinear problem. The agreement is remarkably good, even at relatively large Froude number. This is in contrast to the alternative analytical theory of small step height, which is accurate only for very small steps

Resonant behaviour of an oscillating wave energy converter in a channel

A mathematical model is developed to study the behaviour of an oscillating wave energy converter in a channel. During recent laboratory tests in a wave tank, peaks in the hydrodynamic actions on the converter occurred at certain frequencies of the incident waves. This resonant mechanism is known to be generated by the transverse sloshing modes of the channel. Here the influence of the channel sloshing modes on the performance of the device is further investigated. Within the framework of a linear inviscid potential-flow theory, application of the Green theorem yields a hypersingular integral equation for the velocity potential in the fluid domain. The solution is found in terms of a fast-converging series of Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind. The physical behaviour of the system is then analysed, showing sensitivity of the resonant sloshing modes to the geometry of the device, that concurs in increasing the maximum efficiency. Analytical results are validated with available numerical and experimental data.Comment: Accepted for publicatio

Visco-potential free-surface flows and long wave modelling

In a recent study [DutykhDias2007] we presented a novel visco-potential free surface flows formulation. The governing equations contain local and nonlocal dissipative terms. From physical point of view, local dissipation terms come from molecular viscosity but in practical computations, rather eddy viscosity should be used. On the other hand, nonlocal dissipative term represents a correction due to the presence of a bottom boundary layer. Using the standard procedure of Boussinesq equations derivation, we come to nonlocal long wave equations. In this article we analyse dispersion relation properties of proposed models. The effect of nonlocal term on solitary and linear progressive waves attenuation is investigated. Finally, we present some computations with viscous Boussinesq equations solved by a Fourier type spectral method.Comment: 29 pages, 13 figures. Some figures were updated. Revised version for European Journal of Mechanics B/Fluids. Other author's papers can be downloaded from http://www.lama.univ-savoie.fr/~dutyk

Modeling Shallow Water Flows on General Terrains

A formulation of the shallow water equations adapted to general complex terrains is proposed. Its derivation starts from the observation that the typical approach of depth integrating the Navier-Stokes equations along the direction of gravity forces is not exact in the general case of a tilted curved bottom. We claim that an integration path that better adapts to the shallow water hypotheses follows the "cross-flow" surface, i.e., a surface that is normal to the velocity field at any point of the domain. Because of the implicitness of this definition, we approximate this "cross-flow" path by performing depth integration along a local direction normal to the bottom surface, and propose a rigorous derivation of this approximation and its numerical solution as an essential step for the future development of the full "cross-flow" integration procedure. We start by defining a local coordinate system, anchored on the bottom surface to derive a covariant form of the Navier-Stokes equations. Depth integration along the local normals yields a covariant version of the shallow water equations, which is characterized by flux functions and source terms that vary in space because of the surface metric coefficients and related derivatives. The proposed model is discretized with a first order FORCE-type Godunov Finite Volume scheme that allows implementation of spatially variable fluxes. We investigate the validity of our SW model and the effects of the bottom geometry by means of three synthetic test cases that exhibit non negligible slopes and surface curvatures. The results show the importance of taking into consideration bottom geometry even for relatively mild and slowly varying curvatures

Water waves overtopping over barriers

A numerical and experimental analysis of the wave overtopping over emerged and submerged structures, is presented. An original model is used in order to simulate three-dimensional free surface flows. The model is based on the numerical solution of the motion equations expressed in an integral form in time-dependent curvilinear coordinates. A non-intrusive and continuous-in-space image analysis technique, which is able to properly identify the free surface even in very shallow waters or breaking waves, is adopted for the experimental tests. Numerical and experimental results are compared, for several wave and water depth conditions