This work presents new water surface elevation data including evidence of the spatial correlation of water surface waves generated in shallow water flows over a gravel bed without appreciable bed forms. Careful laboratory experiments have shown that these water surface waves are not well-known gravity or capillary waves but are caused by a different physical phenomenon. In the flow conditions studied, the shear present in shallow flows generates flow structures, which rise and impact on the water-air interface. It is shown that the spatial correlation function observed for these water surface waves can be approximated by the following analytical expression W(ρ) = e -ρ2/2σw2 cos(2πL 0 -1 ρ). The proposed approximation depends on the spatial correlation radius, σ w, characteristic spatial period, L 0, and spatial lag, ρ. This approximation holds for all the hydraulic conditions examined in this study. It is shown that L 0 relates to the depth-averaged flow velocity and carries information on the shape of the vertical velocity profile and bed roughness. It is also shown that σ w is related to the hydraulic roughness and the flow Reynolds number. ©2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
CITATION STYLE
Horoshenkov, K. V., Nichols, A., Tait, S. J., & Maximov, G. A. (2013). The pattern of surface waves in a shallow free surface flow. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 118(3), 1864–1876. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgrf.20117
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