Study on the internal waves induced by a submerged body moving in a continuously stratified fluid

Abstract

This paper studies the characteristics of internal waves induced by the motion of a submerged body through a combination of experimental and numerical methods. First, by deploying an array of conductivity probes in an experiment, the temporal evolution of the internal wave at the plane of the conductivity probe array is obtained and compared with numerical simulation results based on the Navier–Stokes equations, thereby validating the accuracy of the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model. Subsequently, utilizing CFD calculations, further exploration is conducted on the spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of the internal wave, encompassing its generation and evolution, velocity field distribution, wake angle, and wave profile features. Finally, the variation of the internal wave with the Froude number (Fr) is investigated, revealing that it varies apparently with Fr, including the wave component, wave mode, wake length, wake angle, wave amplitude, and so on. It is found that when Fr is large, the internal wave converges toward the centerline behind the body, until forming a line. The wave magnitude changes with Fr in four stages, i.e., increasing with Fr from zero in the first stage, reaching a peak and decreasing thereafter in the second stage, then changing little in the third stage, and finally increasing approximately linearly in the fourth stage.