Experimental study of three-dimensional turbulence under a free surface

Abstract

In many environmental flows, an air-water free surface interacts with a turbulent flow in the water phase. To mimic this situation, we propose an original experimental setup, based on the Randomly Actuated Synthetic Jet Array (RASJA) forcing used to study turbulence with almost no mean flow. By using a central pump connected to jets, we generate a turbulent flow of tunable intensity, with good isotropy and horizontal homogeneity, up to a maximal turbulent Reynolds number of $8800$. The aim here is to characterize how turbulence is modified by the presence of a free surface. We show that the free surface affects turbulence for fluid depths smaller than the integral length. We report that the turbulent fluctuations become strongly anisotropic when approaching the free surface. The vertical velocity fluctuations decrease close to the surface whereas the horizontal ones increase, as reported in previous theoretical predictions and numerical observations. We also observe a strong enhancement of the amplitude of the temporal and spatial power spectra of the horizontal velocity at large scales, showing the strengthening of these velocity fluctuations near the free surface. Besides, these behaviors are studied for various levels of turbulence.