Application of the sampling moiré method to shallow open-channel flows with circular roughness elements

Abstract

This research presents an application of the sampling moiré method, a novel technique originally developed for measuring slight deformation of a static object such as a plate, to fluctuating free water surface in rough open channel flows. The method was used to capture the two-dimensional water surface deformation at a high sampling rate by dyeing the color of water white. The target flow was a very shallow subcritical flow with a depth of 1.5 times the height of the roughness. As a result, a series of instantaneous water surface profiles with non-uniform rough planes were successfully measured at a sampling rate of 100 Hz.It has become clear that the effect of dispersive gravity waves traveling on the water surface is greater than that of non-dispersive waves driven by the turbulence, and that this feature becomes more pronounced as the Froude number increases in such shallow flow conditions. Furthermore, it was experimentally and theoretically verified that the intensity of water surface fluctuation increases with the square of the Froude number. The decomposition of surface fluctuations due to gravity waves and subsurface turbulence using the wavenumber frequency spectrum revealed that the effects of subsurface turbulence are about 20%. This is much less than the contribution from gravity waves in very shallow flows as in this experiment.