Modeling of Langmuir Circulation: Triple Decomposition of the Craik–Leibovich Model

Turbulent shear flows on shallow continental shelves (here shallow means that the interaction with the solid, no-slip bottom is important) are of great importance because of their role in vertical mixing as well as on the transport of sediment and bioactive material. The presence of a wavefield in these areas can lead to the appearance of Langmuir circulation which is known to strongly affect the dynamics of a turbulent flow. To investigate those dynamical effects within a RANS-type modeling framework, we apply a triple decompostion to the LES results of Langmuir circulation in order to further isolate the coherent structures from fluctuating velocity field. The results are compared to the classical double-decomposition. In contrast to the double-decomposition framework, the triple-decompostion more effectively educes the coherent structure field and quantifies the need to take into account the energy exchange between the coherent and random fluctuations as well as the overall impact of the coherent structures on the turbulence dynamics.