Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © Cambridge University Press, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of Cambridge University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics 605 (2008): 281-291, doi:10.1017/S002211200800150X.
Description:
A condition is derived for the hydraulic criticality of a 2-layer flow with transverse variations in both layer velocities and thicknesses. The condition can be expressed in terms of a generalized composite Froude number. The derivation can be extended in order to obtain a critical condition for an N-layer system. The results apply to inviscid flows subject to the usual hydraulic approximation of gradual variations along the channel and is restricted to flows in which the velocity remains single-signed within any given layer. For an intermediate layer with a partial segment of sluggish flow, the long-wave dynamics of the overlying and underlying layers become decoupled.
Description:
The work described herein was supported by the Office of Naval Research (N00014-
07-1-0590) and the National Science Foundation (OCE-0525729).
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
