An experimental study of the dynamics and droplet production in three mechanically generated plunging breaking waves is presented in this two-part paper. In the present paper (Part 2), in-line cinematic holography is used to measure the positions, diameters (
An experimental investigation of droplet generation by a plunging breaking wave is presented. In this work, simultaneous measurements of the wave crest profile evolution and of droplets ranging in radius down to 50 μm for a mechanically generated plunging breaker during many repeated breaking events in freshwater are performed. We find three distinct time zones of droplet production, first when the jet impacts the free surface upstream of the wave crest, second when the large air bubbles entrapped by the plunging jet impact reach the free surface and burst, and third when smaller bubbles burst upon reaching the free surface later in the breaking process. These subprocesses account for 22%, 44%, and 34%, respectively, of the average of 653 droplets produced per breaking event. The probability distributions of the ranges of large and small droplet radii are well represented by power law functions that intersect at a radius of 418 μm.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1829943
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10362115
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Volume:
- 46
- Issue:
- 14
- ISSN:
- 0094-8276
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 8244-8251
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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$d\geq 100\ \mathrm {\mu }{\rm m}$ et al. ,J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 967, 2023, A35) as the droplets move up across a horizontal measurement plane located just above the wave crests. It is found that there are four major mechanisms for droplet production: closure of the indentation between the top surface of the plunging jet and the splash that it creates, the bursting of large bubbles that were entrapped under the plunging jet at impact, splashing and bubble bursting in the turbulent zone on the front face of the wave and the bursting of small bubbles that reach the water surface at the crest of the non-breaking wave following the breaker. The droplet diameter distributions for the entire droplet set for each breaker are fitted with power-law functions in separate small- and large-diameter regions. The droplet diameter where these power-law functions cross increases monotonically from 820 to 1480$\mathrm {\mu }{\rm m}$ -
We present high-resolution three-dimensional (3-D) direct numerical simulations of breaking waves solving for the two-phase Navier–Stokes equations. We investigate the role of the Reynolds number ( Re , wave inertia relative to viscous effects) and Bond number ( Bo , wave scale over the capillary length) on the energy, bubble and droplet statistics of strong plunging breakers. We explore the asymptotic regimes at high Re and Bo , and compare with laboratory breaking waves. Energetically, the breaking wave transitions from laminar to 3-D turbulent flow on a time scale that depends on the turbulent Re up to a limiting value $Re_\lambda \sim 100$ , consistent with the mixing transition in other canonical turbulent flows. We characterize the role of capillary effects on the impacting jet and ingested main cavity shape and subsequent fragmentation process, and extend the buoyant-energetic scaling from Deike et al. ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 801, 2016, pp. 91–129) to account for the cavity shape and its scale separation from the Hinze scale, $r_H$ . We confirm two regimes in the bubble size distribution, $N(r/r_H)\propto (r/r_H)^{-10/3}$ for $r>r_H$ , and $\propto (r/r_H)^{-3/2}$ for $rmore » « less
An experimental study of the dynamics and droplet production in three mechanically generated plunging breaking waves is presented in this two-part paper. In the present paper (Part 1), the dynamics of the three breakers are studied through measurements of the evolution of their free surface profiles during 10 repeated breaking events for each wave. The waves are created from dispersively focused wave packets generated with three wave maker motions that differ primarily by small changes in their overall amplitude. Breaker profiles are measured with a cinematic laser-induced fluorescence technique covering a streamwise region of approximately one breaker wavelength and over a time of 3.4 breaker periods. The aligned profile data is used to create spatio-temporal maps of the ensemble average surface height and the standard deviation of both the local normal distance and the local arc length relative to the instantaneous mean profile. It is found that the mean and standard deviation maps contain strongly correlated localized features and indicate that the transition from laminar to turbulent flow is a highly repeatable process. Regions of high standard deviation include the splash created by the plunging jet impact and subsequent splash impacts at the front of the breaking region as well as the site where the air pocket entrained under the plunging jet at the moment of jet tip impact comes to the surface and pops. In Part 2 (Erinin
et al., J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 967, 2023, A36), these features are used to interpret various features of the distributions of droplet number, diameter and velocity.more » « lessAbstract Bubbles bursting at the ocean surface are an important source of ocean‐spray aerosol, with implications on radiative and cloud processes. Yet, very large uncertainties exist on the role of key physical controlling parameters, including wind speed, sea state and water temperature. We propose a mechanistic sea spray generation function that is based on the physics of bubble bursting. The number and mean droplet radius of jet and film drops is described by scaling laws derived from individual bubble bursting laboratory and numerical experiments, as a function of the bubble radius and the water physico‐chemical properties (viscosity, density and surface tension, all functions of temperature), with drops radii at production from 0.1 to 500 µm. Next, we integrate over the bubble size distribution entrained by breaking waves. Finally, the sea spray generation function is obtained by considering the volume flux of entrained bubbles due to breaking waves in the field constrained by the third moment of the breaking distribution (akin to the whitecap coverage). This mechanistic approach naturally integrates the role of wind and waves via the breaking distribution and entrained air flux, and a sensitivity to temperature via individual bubble bursting mechanisms. The resulting sea spray generation function has not been tuned or adjusted to match any existing data sets, in terms of magnitude of sea salt emissions and recently observed temperature dependencies. The remarkable coherence between the model and observations of sea salt emissions therefore strongly supports the mechanistic approach and the resulting sea spray generation function.
more » « lessThe effects of surfactants on a mechanically generated plunging breaker are studied experimentally in a laboratory wave tank. Waves are generated using a dispersively focused wave packet with a characteristic wavelength of
$\lambda _0 = 1.18$ $\Delta \mathcal {E}$ $\sigma _0$
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