Waves And Mean Flows

A modern account of the nonlinear interactions between waves and mean flows such as shear flows and vortices.

A fundamental reference for graduate students and researchers in fluid mechanics. Now revised throughout, it also includes exercises.

Interactions between waves and mean flows play a crucial role in understanding the long-term aspects of atmospheric and oceanographic modelling. Indeed, our ability to predict climate change hinges on our ability to model waves accurately. This book gives a modern account of the nonlinear interactions between waves and mean flows such as shear flows and vortices. A detailed account of the theory of linear dispersive waves in moving media is followed by a thorough introduction to classical wave–mean interaction theory. The author then extends the scope of the classical theory and lifts its restriction to zonally symmetric mean flows. The book is a fundamental reference for graduate students and researchers in fluid mechanics, and can be used as a text for advanced courses; it will also be appreciated by geophysicists and physicists who need an introduction to this important area in fundamental fluid dynamics and atmosphere-ocean science.

A number of well-known theorems of the hydrodynamic theory of stability are interpreted in terms of the interaction of the waves having different energy signs. Attention is drawn to the plasma-hydrodynamic analogy, which is a powerful tool for physical analyses of general mechanisms of wave amplification and absorption in flows. Various wave-flow interaction problems are considered, for instance, sound generation in whistlers, wave scattering and amplification by vortices, methods of wave remote sounding, and some nonlinear dynamical and chaotic phenomena.

Most well known structures in planetary atmospheres and the Earth’s oceans are jets or fronts interacting with vortices on a wide range of scales. The transition from one state to another, such as in unbalanced or adjustment flows, involves the generation of waves as well as the interaction of coherent structures with these waves. This book presents a fluid mechanics perspective to the dynamics of fronts and vortices and their interaction with waves in geophysical flows. It provides a basic physical background for modeling coherent structures in a geophysical context, and it gives essential information on advanced topics such as spontaneous wave emission and wavemomentum transfer in geophysical flows. Based on a set of lectures by leading specialists, this text is targeted at graduate students, researchers and engineers in geophysics and environmental fluid mechanics.

This up-to-date and comprehensive account of theory and experiment on wave-interaction phenomena covers fluids both at rest and in their shear flows. It includes, on the one hand, water waves, internal waves, and their evolution, interaction, and associated wave-driven means flow and, on the other hand, phenomena on nonlinear hydrodynamic stability, especially those leading to the onset of turbulence. This study provide a particularly valuable bridge between these two similar, yet different, classes of phenomena. It will be of value to oceanographers, meteorologists, and those working in fluid mechanics, atmospheric and planetary physics, plasma physics, aeronautics, and geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamics.

Explore the nature of density-stratified flow over and around topography, including applications to the flow of the atmosphere and ocean.

This volume contains 35 of the contributions to the international meeting Wave Phenomena: Modern Theory and Applications, held at the University of Toronto, Canada, at the end of June 1983.