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Turbulent characteristics of a shallow wall-bounded plane jet: experimental implications for river mouth hydrodynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2009

JOEL C. ROWLAND ,
MARK T. STACEY  and
WILLIAM E. DIETRICH
JOEL C. ROWLAND*
Affiliation:
Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
MARK T. STACEY
Affiliation:
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
WILLIAM E. DIETRICH
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
*
†Present address: Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA. Email address for correspondence: jrowland@lanl.gov
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Abstract

Jets arising from rivers, streams and tidal flows entering still waters differ from most experimental studies of jets both in aspect ratio and in the presence of a solid bottom boundary and an upper free surface. Despite these differences, the applicability of experimental jet studies to these systems remains largely untested by either field or realistically scaled experimental studies. Here we present experimental results for a wall-bounded plane jet scaled to jets created by flow discharging into floodplain lakes. A characteristic feature of both our prototype and experimental jets is the presence of large-scale meandering turbulent structures that span the width of the jets. In our experimental jets, we observe self-similarity in the distribution of mean streamwise velocities by a distance of six channel widths downstream of the jet outlet. After a distance of nine channel widths the velocity decay and the spreading rates largely agree with prior experimental results for plane jets. The magnitudes and distributions of the cross-stream velocity and lateral shear stresses approach self-preserving conditions in the upper half of the flow, but decrease in magnitude, and deviate from self-preserving distributions with proximity to the bed. The presence of the meandering structure has little influence on the mean structure of the jet, but dominates the jet turbulence. A comparison of turbulence analysed at time scales both greater than and less than the period of the meandering structure indicates that these structures increase turbulence intensities by 3–5 times, and produce lateral shear stresses and momentum diffusivities that are one and two orders of magnitude greater, respectively, than turbulence generated by bed friction alone.

JFM classification

Geophysical and Geological Flows: River dynamics Wakes/Jets: Jets Mixing: Turbulent mixing
Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 627 , 25 May 2009 , pp. 423 - 449
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Rowland et al. supplementary movie

Movie 1. Overhead video of experimental jet showing large-scale meandering turbulent structures. Blue gridded squares are 20 cm by 20 cm. Flow is from left to right with yellow/green dye for visualization. Flow depth is 5 cm and flow velocity at outlet is 53 cm/s.

Download Rowland et al. supplementary movie(Video)
Video 7.3 MB