Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Engineering Science

Program

Mechanical and Materials Engineering

Supervisor

Dr.Roger E.Khayat

2nd Supervisor

Dr.Ernest K. Yanful

Joint Supervisor

Abstract

The present study examines the influences of surface tension and wind direction in shallow or thin-film flow with the inclusion of inertial effect. In this present study starting with the fundamental equations (conservation of mass and momentum), an analytical method is introduced to determine the bottom stress at different position of a shallow or thin-film flow domain under the influence of oscillatory wind conditions. The novelty of this study is that the viscous and surface tension effects are considered in this study, whereas in most of the existing studies in a shallow or thin-film flow domain (a shallow tailings pond) the viscous and surface tension effects are neglected. A small perturbation method is used to solve the problem, and finally, the expressions for the flow field (elevation, flow velocity and bottom stress) are found as the solution of the problem in a shallow tailings pond. It is observed from the present study that the presence of inertia tends to increase the flow field values while presence of surface tension reduces the values for the flow field. The flow field suggests that surface tension tends to play different role to inertia. Increase in wind angle values reduce the flow field values as due to higher wind angle less wind stress acts over the flow domain. No significant differences are found for different values of inertia, surface tension and wind direction for the flow field at least in appearance, but the magnitude is different for the flow field for high and low values of inertia, surface tension and wind direction. The calculated bottom stress values from the present study without surface tension effect gives the same qualitative and quantitative values as of linear theory and experiment to verify the present study. It is found from the present study that the bottom stress value decreases when the depth in the shallow pond increases.

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