A New Mechanism for Generation of Langmuir Circulations

A new mechanism has been identified that explains the generation of Langmuir circulations. A wind-driven current in the presence of surface waves gives rise to an instability where the emerging circulations redistribute the turbulence in the cross-wind direction. The non-uniform eddy-viscosity locally changes the rate of momentum transfer from the wind to the shear current, producing a non-uniform velocity field. The interaction of this non-uniform velocity field with the surface waves, due to the Craik-Leibovich vortex force, amplifies the circulations and creates a feedback mechanism. The currently accepted CL2 model of instability assumes a constant eddy-viscosity. This paper presents a model which explains the generation of Langmuir circulations and its predictions of both spatial and time scales are in good agreement with experimental results. The modeling approach combines a perturbation method with a RANS turbulence model. Through parametric variation of the perturbation, the growth rate and spatial scales of the circulations are extracted from the simulations.