Intermittency of near-bottom turbulence in tidal flow on a shallow shelf

The higher-order structure functions of vertical velocity fluctuations (transverse structure functions (TSF)) were employed to study the characteristics of turbulence intermittency in a reversing tidal flow on a 19 m deep shallow shelf of the East China Sea. Measurements from a downward-looking, bottom-mounted Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter, positioned 0.45 m above the seafloor, which spanned two semidiurnal tidal cycles, were analyzed. A classical lognormal single-parameter (mu) model for intermittency and the universal multifractal approach (specifically, the two-parameter (C-1 and alpha) log-Levy model) were employed to analyze the TSF exponent xi(q) in tidally driven turbulent boundary layer and to estimate mu, C-1, and alpha. During the energetic flooding tidal phases, the parameters of intermittency models approached the mean values of (mu) over tilde approximate to 0.24, (C) over tilde (1) approximate to 0.15, and (alpha) over tilde approximate to 1.5, which are accepted as the universal values for fully developed turbulence at high Reynolds numbers. With the decrease of advection velocity, mu and C-1 increased up to mu approximate to 0.5-0.6 and C-1 approximate to 0.25-0.35, but a decreased to about 1.4. The results explain the reported disparities between the smaller "universal" values of intermittency parameters mu and C-1 (mostly measured in laboratory and atmospheric high Reynolds number flows) and those (mu = 0.4-0.5) reported for oceanic stratified turbulence in the pycnocline, which is associated with relatively low local Reynolds numbers R-lambda w. The scaling exponents xi(2) of the second-order TSF, relative to the third-order structure function, was also found to be a decreasing function of R-lambda w, approaching the classical value of 2/3 only at very high R-lambda w. A larger departure from the universal turbulent regime at lower Reynolds numbers could be attributed to the higher anisotropy and associated intermittency of underdeveloped turbulence.U.S. Office of Naval Research [N00014-05-1-0245]; Spanish Ministry of Education and Science [FIS2008-03608]; Major State Program of China for Basic Research [2006CB400602]; Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA