DOI: 10.1615/TSFP8
COUPLING A BOUNDARY LAYER WALL SHEAR-STRESS MODEL WITH FIELD EXPERIMENTS IN A SHALLOW TIDAL RIVER
RÉSUMÉ
Recently, Mathis et al. (2011) developed a conceptual approach that is able to predict instantaneous wall-shear stress fluctuations in turbulent boundary layers. This approach embeds the scale interaction mechanisms, namely superposition and modulation, into a wall-model capable of predicting the fluctuating component of the streamwise wall-shear stress. The present study investigates the potential benefits of this new approach for research on environmental flows, where near-wall information is often missing. The database considered here comes from field measurements using acoustic Doppler velocimeters carried out in a shallow tidal river (Suisun Slough in North San Francisco Bay). Amongst the data, only the sets having defined boundary layer properties are retained. The model, applied to these selected cases, shows promising results. Despite significant uncertainties in the field measurements, statistical analysis and comparisons of energy content demonstrate that predictions using these data agree relatively well with laboratory predictions and DNS results.