Numerical studies on the degeneration of internal waves induced by an initial tilted pycnocline

The pycnocline in a closed domain is tilted by external wind forcing and tends to restore to a level position when the wind falls. An internal seiche oscillation exhibits if the forcing is weak, otherwise internal surge and internal solitary waves emerge, which serve as a link to cascade energy to small-scale processes. A two-dimensional non-hydrostatic code with a turbulence closure model is constructed to extend previous laboratory studies. The model could reproduce all the key phenomena observed in the corresponding laboratory experiments. The model results further serve as a comprehensive and reliable data set for an in-depth understanding of the related dynamical process. The comparative analyses indicate that nonlinear term favors the generation of internal surge and subsequent internal solitary waves, and the linear model predicts the general trend reasonably well. The vertical boundary can approximately reflect all the incoming waves, while the slope boundary serves as an area for small-scale internal wave breaking and energy dissipation. The temporal evolutions of domain integrated kinetic and potential energy are also analyzed, and the results indicate that about 20% of the initial available potential energy is lost during the first internal wave breaking process. Some numerical tactics such as grid topology and model initialization are also briefly discussed.