The role of wave kinematics in turbulent flow over waves

Abstract

The turbulent flow over monochromatic waves of moderate steepness is studied by means of wall resolved LES, and cover a range of wave ages and Reynolds numbers. We compute the Fourier modes of the flow and analyse the momentum balance for the mean and fundamental mode. At low wave ages, the form drag displays a large sensitivity to changes in Reynolds number, and the interaction between turbulent and wave-induced stresses increases with Reynolds number. At higher wave ages, a quasi-laminar regime is entered, where the wave-induced stress is primarily balanced by viscous stresses. To exploit the increasing importance of the wave kinematics observed in the intermediate to high wave age regime, a novel split system approach is introduced, where a laminar response to the wave forces a turbulent RANS type of shear flow . To account for the effects of turbulence, we force the system using Reynolds stresses from the corresponding LES. We give an analytic functional dependence for the form drag associated with the laminar solution. For intermediate to high wave ages, the form drag of the shear flow exhibits relatively simple behaviour, and we derive approximate functional dependencies for the quasi-laminar regime. The high sensitivity of the form drag to variation in Reynolds number at low wave ages is more challenging to evaluate using this approach. This is primarily due to the increased importance of nonlinearity in the shear flow, which are inherently coupled with higher harmonics in the turbulent stresses. Nevertheless, the split system approach can be utilized to quantify the importance of different harmonics in the turbulent stresses by explicitly choosing which modes to include in the split system forcing. We demonstrate that the fundamental mode of the Reynolds stresses becomes increasingly important for accurate prediction of the form drag as the Reynolds number increases.