Coherence analysis of geophysical wakes in flow past a three-dimensional hill

Abstract

Abstract Wakes generated by topographies are ubiquitous in nature. The formation and evolution mechanism of wake-generated eddies is essential to understanding the effect of topography on oceanic bottom flow. In this study, we analyze the temporally resolved numerical database [1] of stratified wakes past an isolated three-dimensional hill, via proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of the vertical vorticity field. We study the dynamics of the near wake (x/D < 3) and the far wake (x/D ≥ 3) separately, where x is the downstream distance from the center of the hill. The aim is to understand how rotation influences the change of coherence from the near to the far wake and also the coherence across heights.