Acoustic Doppler Velocimetry in Transient Free-Surface Flows: Field and Laboratory Experience with Bores and Surges

An understanding of turbulence and mixing is essential to the knowledge of turbulent dissipation, sediment transport, advection of nutrient-rich and organic effluents, and stormwater runoff in prototype water systems, as well as in laboratory channels used for physical modeling of geometrically-scaled full-scale water bodies and for validation of computational models. The acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) system is a robust instrument well suited for such turbulence measurements in open channel flows. The application of acoustic Doppler velocimeter to transient free-surface flows is reviewed in this paper. Based upon field applications and laboratory experiments, the intricacy and inherent difficulties are discussed. The experience and expertise in transient flows highlighted the importance of the signal processing and precise synchronization. Finally, we stress a major benefit of the acoustic Doppler velocimetry for its capability to be used in both field and laboratory, in turn providing some level of confidence in the comparison between full-scale and laboratory data.