Experimental investigation of internal tide generation by two-dimensional topography

This paper reports on an experimental investigation carried out to study tidal conversion by subcritical Gaussian and supercritical, knife-edge topography. Experimental data was obtained using the Synthetic Schlieren method, and the results compared to existing analytical models. Viscous effects were incorporated into the previously inviscid models, to improve the comparison between experiment and theory. One set of experimental results and comparisons with theory are presented for wave beams generated over a subcritical Gaussian ridge. The effect of viscosity was weak on the subcritical beams; but viscosity did effectively smooth out singular regions of supercritical beams that would be predicted by inviscid theory. Overall, there was excellent quantitative agreement, validating both the experimental method and theory