Calculation of internal-wave-driven instability and vortex shedding along a flat bottom

The instability and vortex shedding in the bottom boundary layer caused by internal solitary waves of depression propagating along a shallow pycnocline of a fluid are computed by finite-volume code in two dimensions. The calculated transition to instability agrees very well with laboratory experiments (Carr et al., Phys. Fluids, vol. 20, issue 6, 2008, 06603) but disagrees with existing computations that give a very conservative instability threshold. The instability boundary expressed by the amplitude depends on the depth d of the pycnocline divided by the water depth H, and decays by a factor of 2.2 when d/H is 0.21, and by a factor of 1.6 when d/H is 0.16, and the stratification Reynolds number increases by a factor of 32. The instability occurs at moderate amplitude at large scale. The calculated oscillatory bed shear stress is strong in the wave phase and increases with the scale. Its non-dimensional magnitude at stratification Reynolds number 650 000 is comparable to the turbulent stress that can be extracted from field measurements of internal solitary waves of similar nonlinearity, moving along a pycnocline of similar relative depth.

Automated summary

The instability and vortex shedding caused by internal solitary waves of depression propagating along a shallow pycnocline were computed. The results were in good agreement with laboratory experiments, but disagreed with existing computations. The instability boundary depended on the depth of the pycnocline and decayed with increasing depth and stratification Reynolds number. The oscillatory bed shear stress was strong and increased with scale, comparable to turbulent stress observed in the field.