Linear Stability Analysis of Open-Channel Shear Flow Generated by Vegetation

Abstract

A linear stability analysis of flow in an open-channel partially covered with vegetation was performed. The differential drag between vegetated zones and adjacent nonvegetated zones is known to induce a lateral gradient of the streamwise velocity. The velocity gradient may result in flow instability in the shear layer around the edge of the vegetated zone causing the generation of discrete horizontal vortices. We assume that the base state flow field before the occurrence of instability is characterized by turbulence with a smaller length scale than the flow depth, which is mainly generated by the bottom friction. By introducing perturbations to the flow depth as well as the streamwise and transverse velocities in the base state, the conditions required for perturbations to grow in time were studied over a wide range of (1) Froude number, (2) normalized nonvegetated zone width, and three other dimensionless parameters that represent the relative effect of (3) bed friction, (4) vegetation drag, and (5) subdepth eddy viscosity. All parameters were found to have positive and negative growth rates of perturbations within their respective evaluated ranges. The characteristic vortex shedding frequencies associated with the maximum growth rate was compared with those observed in experiments. Although the analysis that employs a base state set without the large scale lateral motions was shown to be capable of predicting the order of magnitude of the frequencies, there is a systematic discrepancy between the predicted and observed frequencies, which may be due to the limitation of linear stability analysis.