Laboratory study of the generation of spray over water

A hot-film anemometer was used in a wind flume to measure the size and number of water droplets over the air-water interface. Experiments were conducted both with and without mechanically generated waves and each with both freshwater and saltwater. The effects of wind speed and wave height on the vertical distribution of spray were investigated. The mechanism of spray generation was explored. The results of this study indicate that the vertical distribution of the total horizontal flux of droplets can be expressed by a logarithmic distribution. The drop size distribution (drop size spectrum) at a fixed elevation can be described by a negative power law of drop diameter. The droplet production mechanism by bursting bubbles suggested by Blanchard (1963) is found to account for only a portion of the total production. The effect of spray on the remote sensing of the air-sea interface is evaluated. The spray is found to affect strongly the measurements obtained from a radiometer.