EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF 3D GRAVITY CURRENTS

In this work 3D gravity currents are reproduced by both laboratory experiments and numerical simulations. Laboratory gravity currents were generated by releasing a finite volume of salty water into a fresh-water reservoir. The development of each experimental current was recorded by a CCD camera in order to obtain the space-time evolution of the interface between the two fluids by means of an image analysis technique. Four experiments were performed by varying the initial depth of the current and its initial density. Laboratory measurements were used to validate a single-layer, 2D, shallow-water model, which takes into account the entrainment between the two-layers. The comparison between laboratory and numerical results shows that the proposed model is a valid tool to reproduce the propagation of 3D lock-release gravity currents.