Interaction of turbulences with non-breaking divergent waves in an open channel

Abstract This paper presents a direct numerical simulation of turbulent flows over a bump in an open channel to examine the turbulence characteristics near divergent waves emanating from the bump and to investigate the interaction of the turbulences with the divergent waves. To verify the reliability of the simulations, the mean velocity profile and root-mean-square of velocity fluctuations are compared with previous data. The anisotropic invariant maps show that the ratio of the streamwise to spanwise velocity fluctuations plays an important role in characterizing the anisotropic nature of the separated shear layer behind the bump in the vicinity of the free surface. The vortex identification discloses a large-scale streamwise vortical structure from the mean velocity field and a cluster of small coherent structures from the instantaneous velocity field, which are responsible for the anisotropic characteristics of the turbulence beneath the free surface.