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Laboratory experiment on the 3D tide-induced Lagrangian residual current using the PIV technique

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Abstract

The 3D structure of the tide-induced Lagrangian residual current was studied using the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique in a long shallow narrow tank in the laboratory. At the mouth of the tank, a wave generator was used to make periodic wave which represents the tide movement, and at the head of the tank, a laterally sloping topography with the length of one fifth of the water tank was installed, above which the tide-induced Lagrangian residual current was studied. Under the weakly nonlinear condition in the present experiment setup, the results show that the Lagrangian residual velocity (LRV) field has a three-layer structure. The residual current flows inwards (towards the head) in the bottom layer and flows outwards in the middle layer, while in the surface layer, it flows inwards along the shallow side of the sloping topography and outwards along the deep side. The depth-averaged and breadth-averaged LRV are also analyzed based on the 3D LRV observations. Our results are in good agreement with the previous experiment studies, the analytical solutions with similar conditions and the observational results in real bays. Moreover, the volume flux comparison between the Lagrangian and Eulerian residual currents shows that the Eulerian residual velocity violates the mass conservation law while the LRV truly represents the inter-tidal water transport. This work enriches the laboratory studies of the LRV and offers valuable references for the LRV studies in real bays.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely express our thanks to Prof. Shizuo Feng for his valuable suggestions to this paper. The two anonymous reviewers’ comments help us a lot to improve the manuscript.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41676003), NSFC-Shandong Joint Fund for Marine Science Research Centers (U1406401), National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFA0604104), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2017B03514).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Yang Chen, Wensheng Jiang, Xu Chen & Changwei Bian

  2. Laboratory of Marine Environment and Ecology, Ocean University of China, 238 Songling Road, Qingdao, Shandong Province, China

    Wensheng Jiang

  3. Hohai University, Nanjing, China

    Tao Wang

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  1. Yang Chen
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  2. Wensheng Jiang
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  3. Xu Chen
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  4. Tao Wang
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  5. Changwei Bian
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Correspondence to Wensheng Jiang.

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Responsible Editor: Guoping Gao

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Chen, Y., Jiang, W., Chen, X. et al. Laboratory experiment on the 3D tide-induced Lagrangian residual current using the PIV technique. Ocean Dynamics 67, 1567–1576 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-017-1108-6

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