Formation and evolution of roll waves in a shallow free surface flow of a power-law fluid down an inclined plane

TL;DR

This paper investigates the formation and evolution of roll waves in a thin layer of power-law fluid flowing down an inclined plane, comparing 2D and 1D models through numerical simulations and analytical solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a comparison between 2D and 1D models for roll wave formation in power-law fluids, including conditions for wave existence and exact solutions for the 1D case.

Findings

2D wave amplitudes are slightly larger than 1D.

Small perturbations grow in 2D but decay in 1D.

Exact piecewise-smooth solutions are derived for the 1D model.

Abstract

A laminar flow of a thin layer of mud down an inclined plane under the action of gravity is considered. The instability of a film flow and the formation of finite amplitude waves are studied in the framework of both two-dimensional governing equations of a power-law fluid and its depth-averaged hyperbolic simplification. Conditions of roll waves existence for these models are formulated in terms of Whitham criterion. Numerical calculations of the free surface evolution and the roll waves development are performed. It is shown that the roll waves amplitude obtained by the 2D equations is slightly larger than for the 1D model. Moreover, for certain flow parameters, small perturbations of the basic solution grow for the 2D equations and decay for the depth-averaged model. A two-parameter class of exact piecewise-smooth solutions of the 1D model is obtained and a comparison with a numerical solution is made. In the region of these parameters, diagrams of the roll waves existence are constructed.