No abstract

No abstract

Experimental results for near-bottom current velocity profiles for flows over artificial, definitely 2D ripples made of 1.5 cm high aluminum angle-profile spaced at 10 cm intervals are obtained for the following cases: (i) current alone perpendicular to ripples; (ii) current alone parallel to ripples; (iii) combined orthogonal wave-current flows for current parallel to ripples; and (iv) current alone at an angle of 30° to the ripple axis. The velocity profiles are analyzed by the log-profile method, and show the roughness experienced by the current to increase as the angle between ripple and current direction increases, i.e. demonstrating convincingly the reality of the concept of a direction-dependent roughness for flows over a 2D rippled bottom. Roughness experienced by the velocity component perpendicular to the ripples is, however, found to be independent of the direction of the mainstream flow relative to that of the ripples, and the different roughness experienced by the perpendicular and parallel velocity components gives rise to a turning of the current velocity vector to become increasingly aligned with the ripple crests as the bottom is approached from above. Implications of this feature, in terms of net sediment transport direction in combined wave-current flows in inner-shelf coastal waters, is discussed.

When free-surface waves are generated using wave paddles to produce the desired waves, higher order effects might be inevitable for some cases. These can be due to the mismatch in the wave paddle displacement and non-linear free-surface wave kinematics, as well as the moving boundary of wave paddles. Such higher order effects are often manifested as higher harmonic waves, which can propagate independently (or free waves). The presence of such waves will contaminate the quality of the tank test, and together with effects due to scaling and finite size of tank, it is important to reduce or mitigate such effects as much as possible in a wave tank in order to simulate a more realistic scenario. This study investigates the above problem in a systematic manner by using a fully-nonlinear numerical wave tank based on the three-dimensional time-domain Harmonic Polynomial Cell (HPC) method. Wave is generated by flap-type wave paddles on one end of the tank, and is damped on the other end. The paddle boundary conditions are satisfied on the instantaneous paddles surfaces, and the free surface is tracked by the generalized semi-Lagrangian scheme. In this study, first order paddle signal is used to generate regular waves, and the focus is on characterising the behaviour of the generated free higher harmonic waves. We first look into a rectangular wave tank where the paddles are distributed at one side of the tank. Upon the generation of an oblique regular wave (primary wave), it is observed that the generated free waves propagate at a different angle/direction. An explicit analytical expression is derived for the direction of the free waves, which agrees with the numerical observation. Besides propagating at a different direction, the free waves also interact with the primary waves resulting in additional bound waves of the first and third harmonics. Next, we consider a circular wave tank, where paddles along half of the circumference are used to generate planar regular wave, while paddles at the other half are assumed to be able to fully absorb the wave. The generated free waves are observed to focus at a particular region in the tank due to constructive interference. To eliminate or at least mitigate such undesired waves, correction to first order paddle signal is required. Second order correction scheme based on Schaffer (1996) is implemented for such purpose. Preliminary results seem to suggest that second order correction to the paddle signal can only mitigate but cannot completely eliminate the existence of free higher harmonic waves.

An experimental study involving near-orthogonal wave-current interaction in a wave basin is reported in this paper. Due to previous shortcomings associated with 2D bottom configurations, i.e. occurrence of ripple-induced turning of flows close to the bed, the present experiments were conducted with the bottom covered by closely packed ceramic marbles (mean diameter of 1.25cm). Three types of flows were generated over this bottom: current-alone, wave-alone and combined wave-current flow. For current-alone and wave-current cases, the log-profile analysis was used to resolve the equivalent Nikuradse sand grain roughness, kn, while the energy dissipation method was used to estimate kn for wave-alone case. The results show that kn obtained for current-and wave-alone tests is roughly 2.2 times the diameter of the marbles. For orthogonal wave-current flows, the kn value, when used in combination with the GrantMadsen (GM) model to reproduce the experimental apparent roughness, is found to be smaller than the measured current-alone and wave-alone kn. Similar under-prediction of bottom roughness is also observed when the GM model is compared with a numerical study, thus supporting the conjecture that when the current is weak compared to the waves, simple theoretical models like GM are not sufficiently sensitive to the angle of wave-current interaction. Experiments with currents at angles of 60° and 120° to the wave direction yield apparent roughness smaller than the 90° case, which is counter-intuitive since one would expect the mean flow to experience a stronger wave-induced turbulence when it is more aligned with the wave direction. This result indicates a possible contamination from waveinduced mass transport to the mean flow profile for non-orthogonal combined flow cases, and therefore highlights the need for other alternatives to the log-profile analysis when attempting to resolve kn from current velocity profiles from combined wave-current flows.