Sobre la disipación de energía cinética turbulenta asociada con olas que aún no rompen

Abstract

The turbulent kinetic energy dissipation is an essential quantity in the study of turbulence in fluids. In particular, on the transference of turbulent energy from large to small scales and determining its state of equilibrium and stationarity. This work has the purpose of understanding turbulence generation by non-breaking waves from turbulent kinetic energy dissipation analysis. Different groups of nonbreaking monochromatic waves with different slopes were mechanically constructed in a laboratory, whereby an acoustic device, the wave orbitals velocities were measure in various depths. Considering the inertial subrange in the power spectrum of components of turbulence velocity, a turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate was quantified. It was detected that the magnitude of the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate increases with the wave slope and that deeper is invariant to axis rotations. It was distinguished that most of the profiles of the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation agree with an atypical logarithmic layer. Finally, a term of turbulence production was introduced, relative to nonbreaking wave orbital velocities. Unlike other turbulence production terms or approximations, it adequately reproduces the values of the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate regardless of wave slope, which established that the wave orbitals velocities shear is the generator mechanism of turbulence in a fluid under nonbreaking waves.