Abstract: This study is focused on the impact of thermal stratification on interflow travel time. A quantitative relation between buoyancy frequency and interflow travel time is theoretically derived based on the Bernoulli principle of energy conservation. Experiments and numerical simulations are carried out to validate the applicability of the proposed relation. For experiments, interflow movement is successfully detected in a small-depth water tank by releasing a denser flow into a temperature stratification environment. For numerical simulations, a vertical 2D renormalization group (RNG) k-( model is developed to simulate the interflow. The results both of the experiments and of the numerical simulations verify our proposed theory. The derived analytic relation is useful for the prediction of contaminant travel time in reservoirs and in assisting pollution control.

Key words: Interflow, Travel time, Stratification, Buoyancy frequency, Renormalization group (RNG) k-( model

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