Gravity Currents Produced by Sudden Release of a Fixed Volume of Heavy Fluid

Abstract

In this paper we study various aspects of gravity (or density) currents arising from instantaneous releases of heavy fluids in a rectangular channel with a horizontal bottom. It is shown, by means of a scaling argument, that these plane currents can be successfully modeled by a two‐by‐two system in conservation form together with a pair of algebraic relations. A number of numerical experiments are carried out using this “weak stratification” model to elicit information concerning the behavior of gravity currents. A weakly nonlinear analysis is employed to clarify some aspects that were uncovered by the numerical experimentation.