Rotational flow in gravity current heads
- 15 July 2005
- journal article
- research article
- Published by The Royal Society in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
- Vol. 363 (1832) , 1603-1623
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2005.1597
Abstract
The structure of gravity currents and plumes, in an unbounded ambient, on a slope of arbitrary angle is analysed. Inviscid, rotational flow solutions in a wedge are used to study the flow near the front of a current, and used to show that the Froude number is and the angle of the front to the slope is 60°. This extends the result of von Kármán (1940) to arbitrary slope angles and large internal current velocities. The predictions of the theory are briefly compared with experiments and used to explain the large negative (relative to ambient) pressures involved in avalanches.Keywords
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