Laboratory Measurements and Numerical Simulations of Internal Solitary Waves in a Shear Flow

The effect of shear on the evolution of mode-2 solitary waves has been studied both in the laboratory and with a 2-D numerical code. The results show that the waves become increasingly more asymmetric with increasing shear (decreasing Richardson number), with a larger amplitude of the solitary wave in the fluid where the current goes in the same direction as the wave propagation, and a smaller amplitude in the fluid where the current goes opposite to the direction of wave propagation. The solitary waves also propagate increasingly faster with increasing shear.