Contrasts between estuarine and river systems in near-bed turbulent flows in the Zhujiang (Pearl River) Estuary, China

A bottom-mounted instrumental tripod was deployed in the tidally energetic Zhujiang (Pearl River) Estuary to examine the contrasting properties of the bottom boundary layer (BBL) flows between estuarine and tide-affected river systems. Three aspects of the BBL flows were investigated to understand the mechanism of the turbulence responses to the large-scale ambient forcing: the flow structures (profile, anisotropy, and spectra), shearing strains and stresses, and the balance of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE). Single log-law profiles and turbulence anisotropy predominated in the two systems, but the non-log regime and stronger anisotropy occurred more frequently at the slack tide in the estuary. The ADV-based turbulence intensities and shearing strains both exceeded their low-frequency counterparts (frictional velocities and mean shears) derived from the logarithmic law. On the contrary, the ADV-based Reynolds stresses were smaller than the log profile-derived bottom stresses, so the hypothesis of a constant stress layer cannot be well satisfied, especially in the river. The bandwidth of the inertial subrange in the river was of one decade larger than in the estuary. The balance between shear production and viscous dissipation was better achieved in the straight river. This first-order balance was significantly broken in the estuary and in the meandering river, by non-shear production/dissipation due to wave-induced fluctuations or salinity/sediment stratification. All these disparities between two systems in turbulence properties are essentially controlled by the anisotropy induced by the large-scale processes such as secondary currents, density stratification. In conclusion, the acceleration of unsteady flows determines the profile structure of the BBL flow, and turbulence anisotropy results in the invalidation of the phenomenological relations such as the constant stress hypothesis and the first-order TKE balance.