Observations of tidally forced flow in a constricted region of a highly stratified sound are examined as a problem of two-layer hydraulic exchange. It is shown that the narrowest section and the region downstream of the narrowest section were subject to internal hydraulic control. Bores moved upstream and evolved into packets of internal solitary waves with 3-6 minute period when the tide turned to ebb. Using results from different models of the solitary wave based on the KdV equation, it is shown that the second-order nonlinear term must be included in the two-layer model. The results from a first-order continuously stratified model gave similar good results. This implies that two-layer models may ignore some properties of the real fluid and that the internal solitons are also sensitive to the stratification characteristics of the water column. It is found that the mixing was related to both the vertical velocity shear, the hydraulic characteristics of the flow and the presence of solitary waves.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.60021 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Gan, Jianping, 1962- |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Meteorology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001238158, proquestno: AAIMM67718, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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