J Austral Math Soc Ser B 33 pp451--473, 1992.

Interaction of buoyant plumes in open-channel flow

P. J. Wicks

Abstract

In this paper, a model for lateral dispersion in open-channel flow is studied involving a diffusion equation which has a nonlinear term describing the effect of buoyancy. The model is used to investigate the interaction of two buoyant pollutant plumes. An approximate analytic technique involving Hermite polynomials is applied to the resulting PDEs to reduce them to a system of ODEs for the centroids and widths of the two plumes. The ODEs are then solved numerically. A rich variety of behaviour occurs depending on the relative positions, widths and strengths of the initial discharges. It is found that for two plumes of equal strength and width discharged side-by-side, the plumes move apart and the rate of spreading is inhibited by their interaction, whereas when one plume is initially much wider than the other, both plumes tend to drift to the side of the narrower plume. Finally, the PDEs are solved numerically for two sets of initial conditions and a comparison is made with the ODE solutions. Agreement is found to be good.

Browse the article

Author

P. J. Wicks

Depart. of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, UK.