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We revisit the classical but as yet unresolved problem of predicting the strength of breaking 2-D and 3-D gravity water waves, as quantified by the amount of wave energy dissipated per breaking event. Following Duncan ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 126, 1983, pp. 507–520), the wave energy dissipation rate per unit length of breaking crest may be related to the fifth moment of the wave speed and the non-dimensional breaking strength parameter $$b$$ . We use a finite-volume Navier–Stokes solver with large-eddy simulation resolution and volume-of-fluid surface reconstruction (Derakhti & Kirby, J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 761, 2014 a , pp. 464–506; J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 790, 2016, pp. 553–581) to simulate nonlinear wave evolution, with a strong focus on breaking onset and postbreaking behaviour for representative cases of wave packets with breaking due to dispersive focusing and modulational instability. The present study uses these results to investigate the relationship between the breaking strength parameter $$b$$ and the breaking onset parameter $$B$$ proposed recently by Barthelemy et al. ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 841, 2018, pp. 463–488). The latter, formed from the local energy flux normalized by the local energy density and the local crest speed, simplifies, on the wave surface, to the ratio of fluid speed to crest speed. Following a wave crest, when $$B$$ exceeds a generic threshold value at the wave crest (Barthelemy et al. 2018), breaking is imminent. We find a robust relationship between the breaking strength parameter $$b$$ and the rate of change of breaking onset parameter $$\text{d}B/\text{d}t$$ at the wave crest, as it transitions through the generic breaking onset threshold ( $$B\sim 0.85$$ ), scaled by the local period of the breaking wave. This result significantly refines previous efforts to express $$b$$ in terms of a wave packet steepness parameter, which is difficult to define robustly and which does not provide a generically accurate forecast of the energy dissipated by breaking.
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Drop impact on solids: contact-angle hysteresis filters impact energy into modal vibrations
The energetics of drop deposition are considered in the capillary-ballistic regime characterized by high Reynolds number and moderate Weber number. Experiments are performed impacting water/glycol drops onto substrates with varying wettability and contact-angle hysteresis. The impacting event is decomposed into three regimes: (i) pre-impact, (ii) inertial spreading and (iii) post contact-line (CL) pinning, conveniently framed using the theory of Dussan & Davis ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 173, 1986, pp. 115–130). During fast-time-scale inertial spreading, the only form of dissipation is CL dissipation ( $$\mathcal {D}_{CL}$$ ). High-speed imaging is used to resolve the stick-slip dynamics of the CL with $$\mathcal {D}_{CL}$$ measured directly from experiment using the $$\Delta \alpha$$ - $$R$$ cyclic diagram of Xia & Steen ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 841, 2018, pp. 767–783), representing the contact-angle deviation against the CL radius. Energy loss occurs on slip legs, and this observation is used to derive a closed-form expression for the kinetic K and interfacial $$\mathcal{A}$$ post-pinning energy $$\{K+\mathcal {A}\}_p/\mathcal {A}_o$$ independent of viscosity, only depending on the rest angle $$\alpha _p$$ , equilibrium angle $$\bar {\alpha }$$ and hysteresis $$\Delta \alpha$$ , which agrees well with experimental observation over a large range of parameters, and can be used to evaluate contact-line dissipation during inertial spreading. The post-pinning energy is found to be independent of the pre-impact energy, and it is broken into modal components with corresponding energy partitioning approximately constant for low-hysteresis surfaces with fixed pinning angle $$\alpha _p$$ . During slow-time-scale post-pinning, the liquid/gas ( $lg$ ) interface is found to vibrate with the frequencies and mode shapes predicted by Bostwick & Steen ( J. Fluid Mech. , vol. 760, 2014, pp. 5–38), irrespective of the pre-impact energy. Resonant mode decay rates are determined experimentally from fast Fourier transforms of the interface dynamics.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1935590
- PAR ID:
- 10311622
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Fluid Mechanics
- Volume:
- 923
- ISSN:
- 0022-1120
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2021.547
