Meandering jets in shallow rectangular reservoir

In this article, meandering flows in a shallow rectangular reservoir are experimentally and numerically investigated. Two experiments were performed in a smooth shallow horizontal flume and the surface velocity fields were measured by Large-Scale PIV (LSPIV). The flow conditions were chosen in such a way that the friction regime of both flows was different. These flows were then modelled using the academic code WOLF2D, which solves the 2D shallow water equations and uses a depth-averaged k- model for modelling turbulence. The main characteristics of the measured and simulated flows were finally extracted from a Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) of the surface velocity fields and depth-averaged velocity fields respectively and were compared. When the mean fluctuating kinetic energy of the considered POD mode is greater than 1×10-5 m²/s², the numerical modelling and the experiments are in good agreement whatever the friction regime of the flow.