Front Velocity of Gravity Currents down a Slope in a Stratified Environment

摘要

Gravity currents in stratified environments are frequently en-countered in many natural and engineering environments. Ex-periments are conducted in a linearly density stratified flume tostudy the front velocity of gravity currents down a ramp. Ourresults show that the gravity current is highly impacted by thestratification of the ambient water. Three development stages ofthe gravity currents are observed, i.e., acceleration stage, decel-eration stage and separation stage. By taking into account theinfluence of linear stratification, a formula is derived based onthe thermal theory to determine the accelerating velocity of thegravity current.