Linear Analysis of Longshore Currents Instability over Mild Slopes

Longshore current instability is important to nearshore hydrodynamic and sediment transport. This paper investigates the longshore current instability growth model based experimental data with different velocity profiles of slopes1:100 and 1:40 by adopting a linear shear instability model with the bottom friction effects. The results show that:(1)Only backshear mode exists in the instability of longshore current for slope 1:40 and frontshear and backshear modes may exist slope 1:100.(2) The peaks of linear instability growth mode for slope 1:100 correspond to three cases: the dominant peak is formed by the joint action of both frontshear and backshear, or by backshear alone without the existence of the smaller peak or formed by either the frontshear or backshear.(3) Bottom friction can decrease the corresponding unstable growth rate but it cannot change the unstable fluctuation period. The results of fluctuation period, wavelength and spatial variation obtained by the analysis of linear shear instability are in good agreement with experimental results.

Observing eddy dye patches induced by shear instabilities in the surf zone on a plane beach

The effects of surf zone eddy generated by alongshore currents on the deformation and transport of dye are still poorly understood,and related tracer release experiments are lacking.Therefore,a tracer release laboratory experiment was conducted under monochromatic,unidirectional incident waves with a large incident angle(30°)on a plane beach with a 1:100 slope in a large wave basin.A charge-coupled device suspended above the basin recorded the dye patch image.The evolution of eddy dye patch was observed and the transport and diffusion were analyzed based on the collected images.Subsequently,a linear instability numerical model was adopted to calculate the perturbation velocity field at the initial stage.The observation and image processing results show that surf zone eddy patches occurred and were separated from the original dye patches.Our numerical analysis results demonstrate that the structure of the perturbation velocity field is consistent with the experimental observations,and that the ejection of eddy patches shoreward or offshore may be ascribed to the double vortex.

Dynamical analysis of mesoscale eddy-induced ocean internal waves using linear theories

This study aims to explore generation mechanisms of the ocean internal wave using the dynamical analysis methods based on linear theories. Historical cruise measurements and recent synthetic aperture radar （SAR） observations of mesoscale eddies with diameter of several tens of kilometers to hundreds of kilometers show that the internal wave packets with wavelength of hundreds of meters to kilometer exist inside the mesoscale eddies. This coexistence phenomenon and inherent links between the two different scale processes are revealed in the solutions of governing equations and boundary conditions for the internal wave disturbance with a horizontally slowly variable amplitude in a cylindrical coordinate system. The theoretical solutions indicate that the instability of eddy current field provides the dynamical mechanism to internal wave generation. The derived dispersion relation indicates that the internal wave propagation is modified by the eddy current field structure. The energy equation of the internal waves clearly shows the internal wave energy increment comes from the eddy. The theoretical models are used to explain the observation of the mesoscale eddy-induced internal waves off the Norwegian coast. The two-dimensional waveform solution of the anticyclonic eddy-induced internal wave packet appears as ring-shaped curves, which contains the typical features of eddy stream lines. The comparison of theoretical solutions to the structure of the internal wave packets on SAR image shows a good agreement on the major features.