Abstract
Breaking of shoaling internal solitary waves (ISWs) is important for mixing and mass transport processes in oceans and lakes. For ISWs in a two-layer stratified fluid, previous studies identified four breaker types: surging, plunging, collapsing, and fission. The latest classification of these breaker types is based on the wave slope and the bottom slope ; however, this classification was found to be unsatisfactory in delineating collapsing and plunging breakers. The present study proposes a new classification for these two breaker types using extended data sets, consisting of published experimental data and the results of new numerical simulations. It was found that a single nondimensional index delineates collapsing and plunging breakers in the extended data, where is a new wave Reynolds number that accounts for nonlinear wave steepening.
1 More- Received 11 August 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.4.014801
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