Rotational flow in gravity current heads

Abstract

The structure of gravity currents and plumes, in an unbounded ambient, on a slope of arbitrary angle is analysed. Inviscid, rotational flow solutions in a wedge are used to study the flow near the front of a current, and used to show that the Froude number is radical2 and the angle of the front to the slope is 60 degrees. This extends the result of von Kármán (1940) to arbitrary slope angles and large internal current velocities. The predictions of the theory are briefly compared with experiments and used to explain the large negative (relative to ambient) pressures involved in avalanches.