Section: New Results

Amoss : Comparison with experimental results and unreduced model on flat plane

Participants : B. Nkonga, H. Guillard, S. Gavrilyuck, Y-C. Tai, F. Yang, K.m. Shyue, C-Y Kuo.

The purpose of this work was the numerical study of the roll-waves that develop from a uniform unstable flow down an inclined rectangular channel. In particular, the formation of the roll-waves is studied by two different approaches. In the first approach, the roll-waves were produced in a long channel where a wave maker perturbed the free surface only at the channel inlet. The average discharge was fixed. In the second approach, the roll-waves were produced in a “periodic box” with a uniform flow velocity. The average depth of a perturbed free surface was the same as in the long channel. Formally, the “periodic box” and a long channel correspond to two different physical situations. However, the stationary profile formed for long time in these cases is the same. This allows us to use the “periodic box” as a simpler mathematical tool to study the asymptotic behavior of roll waves. In particular, the “periodic box” does not require a big space domain resolution. Several interesting phenomena were observed. First, it was proven that there exists Lmax such that any single roll wave of length $L>L_{max}$ not stable. This can help to generalize the analytical results obtained by Liapidevskii (modulational stability study) and Baker et al. (the linear stability study) for the SV equations, to the case of the generalized models. The minimal length of periodic box for which a single roll wave is stable, was not observed. Second, a coarsening phenomenon was observed. When the inlet perturbation has two different frequencies, it produces the waves of the different wavelengths. The waves begin to interact. The short waves transfer their energy to the long waves, and finally we obtain the train of roll waves of a larger wavelength. A strong non-stationary modulation of the wave amplitude was observed. The formation of periodic roll wave train was shown for both long a channel and a “periodic box” for two sets of experimental parameters. In both cases, the free surface profile for the generalized models was found in a very good agreement with the experimental results. Finally, for a 2D simplified “Toy Model” we show that steady numerical solution corresponding to experimental data does not depend of transverse perturbations.