Reynolds Stress Anisotropy Based Turbulent Eddy Viscosity Model Applied to Numerical Ocean Models

Abstract

The present state-of-the-art ocean models use an eddy viscosity that depends on structure parameter (Cμ ). In this paper we use a Reynolds stress anisotropy based formulation for the eddy viscosity because in addition to the value of turbulent kinetic energy, it also depends on the degree of anisotropy. The formulation is incorporated into the General Ocean Turbulence Model (GOTM) and simulated using the famous test case of Ocean Weather Station (OWS) Papa experiment. Even if there is not much of an improvement in terms of results with this model, it can be very easily incorporated into the ocean models removing cumbersome equations for structure parameters.