Hi!
I just made some first tests on a (too much) simplified flume geometry, and I have some questions regarding the best way to model velocities near the surface in case of wind.
The model is rather short, 20 m and 3 m deep. Wind is 10 m/s in X direction.
Velocities in a longitudinal section are given in graphs below for different turbulence settings. The flow at surface goes from left to right, and opposite direction on the bottom.
1/ UV: Smagorinski, W: Mixing Lengh Quetin (5)
2/ UV: Smagorinski, W: Mixing Lengh Tsanis (6)
3/ UVW: Smagorinski
3/ UVW: k-epsilon
First, we can see that the channel is not long enough to obtain a steady state, especially for k-epsilon. Nevertheless the model gives interesting results allowing to make a quick comparison between different turbulence models.
The two first tests seem to give rather good results. Near the surface, Tsanis model gives higher velocities than Quetin.
Smagorinski on UVW gives rather good results in depth but the gradient near the surface is much higher with maximal velocities ca 2 times higher than with Tsanis.
The test with k-epsilon is hard to comment since the model is obviously too short for turbulence to develop. But it seems to give a smoother velocity profile along the vertical, with a somewhat lower velocity at the surface (ca 60 % the velocity obtained with Tsanis).
Initially I was planning to use either UV : Samgoringski + W : Mixing Length (5 or 6, models adapted for wind driven currents) or k-epsilon. It seems that velocities at the surface can differ rather significantly between these two types of models. Should k-epsilon be avoided in case of wind driven currents?
Finally, a last word to say that the above results integrate a source term on the water surface to account for head losses due to floating pier (without local pressure though), but the computed drag coefficient (0,05 * UNORM) is too small to have a significant effect (the is enhanced by the fact the surface velocities are also rather small). But the implementation with an artificial higher value (0,5 * UNORM) showed good results.
Thanks in advance for any tips :)
Regards
PL