Interaction of Streamwise and Wall-Normal Velocities in Combined Wave-Current Motion

The aim of this paper is to present an analytical expression for the streamwise velocity distribution in a non-uniform flow in the presence of waves; the correlation between the horizontal and vertical velocity components has been comprehensively examined. Different from previous researches which attributed the deviation of velocity from the classical log-law to the wave Reynolds stress, i.e. -ρ only, this study demonstrates that the momentum flux caused by mean velocities, i.e., and, is also responsible for the velocity deviation, and it is found that the streamwise velocity for a flow in the presence of non-zero wall-normal velocity does not follow the classical log-law, but the modified log-law proposed in this study based on simplified mixing-length theorem. The validity of the modified log-law has been verified by use of available experimental data from published sources for combined wave-current flows, and good agreement between the predicted and observed velocity profiles has been achieved.