1. Spectral and Structure Function Estimates of Turbulence Dissipation Rates in a High-Flow Tidal Channel Using Broadband ADCPs.
- Author
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MCMILLAN, JUSTINE M. and HAY, ALEX E.
- Subjects
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INFORMATION storage & retrieval systems , *FOREIGN exchange rates , *AERODYNAMICS , *DOPPLER effect , *ENERGY dissipation , *ESTIMATES - Abstract
Spectral and structure function methods are implemented to compute the dissipation rate e from broadband, diverging-beam acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) data collected at four sites in a high-flow tidal channel. This paper shows that middepth estimates of ϵ obtained from spectral and second-order structure function (SF2) methods are both lognormally distributed with comparable means and variances. Speed bin-averaged e values agree to within 16%, depending on the site and tidal phase (ebh/flood). The close agreement between the two independent methods provides further support for the argument put forward by McMillan et al.: that is, that the factor-of-2 difference between shear probe and (spectral) ADCP estimates of e was likely caused by spatial differences in turbulence levels. The agreement between the spectral and both second- and third-order structure function methods also supports the use of C2 = 2.0 for the SF2 universal constant. Notably, however, the SF3 method was less robust for these data. Two additional aspects of the SF2 approach are examined in some detail: 1) the differences from upstream- and downstream-facing beams are shown to arise from the Reynolds stress and 2) the inability of the ADCP to resolve small-scale motions does not affect the estimates of ϵ but yields apparent Doppler noise levels that--counterintuitively--decrease with increasing flow speed and increasing dissipation rate. A modified SF2 method that accounts for the variance associated with the unresolved scales removes the flow speed dependence and yields noise level estimates that agree with the spectral values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
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