Mixing in lock-release gravity currents propagating up a slope

Lock-exchange gravity currents propagating up a slope are investigated by large eddy simulations, focusing on the entrainment and mixing processes occurring between the dense current and the ambient fluid. Relevant parameters, such as the aspect ratio of the initial volume of dense fluid in the lock R, the angle between the bottom boundary and the horizontal direction \u3b8 and the depth aspect ratio \u3c6, are varied. The numerical results are compared with laboratory experiments and a good agreement is found. Entrainment and mixing in a lock-release gravity current are studied using different entrainment parameters and an energy budget method. The entrainment is found to depend on both Froude, Fr, and Reynolds, Re, numbers. In addition, the dependence of both entrainment and mixing on the parameters varied is discussed. The entrainment decreases with increasing steepness of the bottom and R. Irreversible mixing is not affected by the varied parameters during the slumping phase, while during the successive phases of motion, it is found to decrease with the increase of \u3b8 and R. Low entrainment and mixing occur for \u3c6 <

Numerical simulation of conjugate heat transfer and surface radiative heat transfer using the P1 thermal radiation model: Parametric study in benchmark cases

A parametric investigation of radiative heat transfer is carried out, including the effects of conjugate heat transfer between fluid and solid media. The thermal radiation is simulated using the P1-model. The numerical model and the thermal coupling strategy, suitable for a transient solver, is described. Such numerical coupling requires that the radiative equation is solved several times at each iteration; hence, the computational cost of the radiative model is a crucial issue. The P1-model is adopted because of its particularly fast computation. First, a collection of benchmark cases is presented and used to carefully validate the radiation model against literature results and to analyse the model prediction limits. Despite the simplicity of the model, it satisfactorily reproduces the thermal radiation effects. Some lack of accuracy is identified in particular cases. Second, a number of benchmark cases are described and adopted to investigate fluid\u2013solid thermal interaction in the presence of radiation. Three cases are designed, to couple radiation with: pure conduction, conduction and forced convection, conduction and natural convection. In all the cases, the surface radiative heat transfer strongly influences the system thermodynamics, leading to a significant increase of the fluid\u2013solid interface temperature. The main non-dimensional numbers, related to the mutual influence of the different heat transfer modes, are introduced and employed in the analyses. A new conduction-radiation parameter is derived in order to study the conductive boundary layer in absence of convective heat transfer

Axisymmetric three-dimensional gravity currents generated by lock exchange

Unconfined three-dimensional gravity currents generated by lock exchange using a small dividing gate in a sufficiently large tank are investigated by means of large eddy simulations under the Boussinesq approximation, with Grashof numbers varying over five orders of magnitudes. The study shows that, after an initial transient, the flow can be separated into an axisymmetric expansion and a globally translating motion. In particular, the circular frontline spreads like a constant-flow-rate, axially symmetric gravity current about a virtual source translating along the symmetry axis. The flow is characterised by the presence of lobe and cleft instabilities and hydrodynamic shocks. Depending on the Grashof number, the shocks can either be isolated or produced continuously. In the latter case a typical ring structure is visible in the density and velocity fields. The analysis of the frontal spreading of the axisymmetric part of the current indicates the presence of three regimes, namely, a slumping phase, an inertial-buoyancy equilibrium regime and a viscous-buoyancy equilibrium regime. The viscous-buoyancy phase is in good agreement with the model of Huppert (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 121, 1982, pp. 43-58), while the inertial phase is consistent with the experiments of Britter (Atmos. Environ., vol. 13, 1979, pp. 1241-1247), conducted for purely axially symmetric, constant inflow, gravity currents. The adoption of the slumping model of Huppert & Simpson (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 99 (04), 1980, pp. 785-799), which is here extended to the case of constant-flow-rate cylindrical currents, allows reconciling of the different theories about the initial radial spreading in the context of different asymptotic regimes. As expected, the slumping phase is governed by the Froude number at the lock's gate, whereas the transition to the viscous phase depends on both the Froude number at the gate and the Grashof number. The identification of the inertial-buoyancy regime in the presence of hydrodynamic shocks for this class of flows is important, due to the lack of analytical solutions for the similarity problem in the framework of shallow water theory. This fact has considerably slowed the research on variable-flow-rate axisymmetric gravity currents, as opposed to the rapid development of the knowledge about cylindrical constant-volume and planar gravity currents, despite their own environmental relevance

Large eddy simulation of stably stratified open channel flow

Large eddy simulation has been used to study flow in an open channel with stable stratification imposed at the free surface by a constant heat flux and an adiabatic bottom wall. This leads to a stable pycnocline overlying a well-mixed turbulent region near the bottom wall. The results are contrasted with studies in which the bottom heat flux is nonzero, a difference analogous to that between oceanic and atmospheric boundary layers. Increasing the friction Richardson number, a measure of the relative importance of the imposed surface stratification with respect to wall-generated turbulence, leads to a stronger, thicker pycnocline which eventually limits the impact of wall-generated turbulence on the free surface. Increasing stratification also leads to an increase in the pressure-driven mean streamwise velocity and a concomitant decrease in the skin friction coefficient, which is, however, smaller than in the previous channel flow studies where the bottom buoyancy flux was nonzero. It is found that the turbulence in any given region of the flow can be classified into three regimes (unstratified, buoyancy-affected, and buoyancy-dominated) based on the magnitude of the Ozmidov length scale relative to a vertical length characterizing the large scales of turbulence and to the Kolmogorov scale. Since stratification does not strongly influence the near-wall turbulent production in the present configuration, the behavior of the buoyancy flux, turbulent Prandtl number, and mixing efficiency is qualitatively different from that seen in stratified shear layers and in channel flow with fixed temperature walls, and, furthermore, collapse of quantities as a function of gradient Richardson number is not observed. The vertical Froude number is a better measure of stratified turbulence in the upper portion of the channel where buoyancy, by providing a potential energy barrier, primarily affects the transport of turbulent patches generated at the bottom wall. The characteristics of free-surface turbulence including the kinetic energy budget and pressure-strain correlations are examined and found to depend strongly on the surface stratification. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF SEDIMENT ENTRAINMENT BY LOCK-EXCHANGE GRAVITY CURRENTS

Gravity currents are flows driven by buoyancy differences between two contacting fluids caused by differences in temperature, salinity, or by the presence of suspended particles. Such flows can reach high velocities near the bed, especially on the area behind the front of the current. As a result, rapid morphological changes may take place in river and estuarine beds due to the passage of these flows. Essential to determine the erosion induced by the current, are the spatial and temporal distributions of the bed shear stress. However, these are troublesome to measure in laboratory or in the field. To bridge this difficulty, the eddy-solving numerical simulations may be used. This study presents here the three-dimensional numerical simulations of lock-exchange salinity currents flowing over a mobile bed. It is aimed at the characterization of the sediment entrainment capacity of the current. The large eddy simulation technique is employed for analyzing the evolution and the structure of the current. For the sediment simulation, an Euler-Euler methodology based on a single phase approach is used. The main features of the current are compared with experimental data obtained in the laboratory. Velocity fields and bed shear stress distributions for different initial current densities are analyzed and linked to entrainment scenarios. The influence of small variations in particle size of the mobile bed is also discussed

Large eddy simulation in hydraulic engineering: Examples of laboratory-scale numerical experiments

Over the years, large eddy simulation (LES) has emerged as a tool to study problems in fluid mechanics characterized by complex physics and geometry. Among these, attention has been paid to studying problems of relevance in hydraulics and environmental fluid mechanics. For many years, LES has been used as an underresolved, or coarse, direct numerical simulation (DNS) where the scales unrepresented by the grid are modeled by means of a sub-grid-scale model, designed to drain energy from the resolved scales of motion. This method, although limited in applicability because of its computational cost, has allowed exploitation of the physics of a class of idealized flow fields of importance in hydraulic engineering. This study reports on investigations into processes of interest to hydraulic engineering. Some significant examples of such studies, together with relevant research from the literature, are given. Specifically, a description of literature related to turbulence in presence of longitudinal bars and local scours, studies of irregular roughness present in hydraulic applications, studies of Lagrangian and Eulerian dispersion processes, and studies of gravity currents is given. Although unable to give an answer to real-scale problems in hydraulic engineering, such studies allow unveiling of the physics behind phenomena present in hydraulics and, on the other hand, allow improved parametrization to be used in reduced-order models. The study is concluded with the author\u2019s point of view on the importance of LES in hydraulic engineering in the upcoming future

Environmental stratified flows

The volume covers the theory of stratified flows, from basic concepts to recent developments in the area of environmental fluid mechanics. The state of art of numerical techniques suited for stratified flows is given. Results of very recent researches in the areas of environmental stratified flows are discussed with details. The topics are treated in four separate chapters. The volume gives a unified view of stratified turbulent flows, from small-scale mixing, to large-scale environmental phenomena, also including detailed discussion on interaction between turbulence and internal gravity waves. The book will serve as an important review tool for all the scientists involved in the investigation of small scale as well as geophysical stratified flows

A New Small Drifter for Shallow Water Basins: Application to the Study of Surface Currents in the Muggia Bay (Italy)

A new small drifter prototype for measuring current immediately below the free surface in a water basin is proposed in this paper. The drifter dimensions make it useful for shallow water applications. The drifter transmits its GPS location via GSM phone network. The drifter was used to study the trajectory of the surface current in the Muggia bay, the latter containing the industrial harbor of the city of Trieste (Italy). The analysis has been carried out under a wide variety of wind conditions. As regards the behavior of the drifter, the analysis has shown that it is well suited to detect the water current since its motion is marginally affected by the wind. The study has allowed detecting the main features of the surface circulation within the Muggia bay under different meteorological conditions. Also, the study has shown that the trajectory of the surface current within the bay is weakly affected by the Coriolis force

Direct and Large Eddy Simulations of Environmental flows

Recent applications of Direct and LArge Eddy simulation investigations of flows of interest to Environmental Fluid Mechanics are reviewed. The chapter first describes computational methods for such numerical experiments, then it reviews fundamental studied of stratified flows, both in free shear cases and in wall bounded flows; successively studies of boundary layers affected by rotation are discussed. Finally the chapter reviews topographycal effects in stratified and rotating flows