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The present work experimentally investigates the dynamics of unsteady gravity currents produced by lock-release of a saline mixture into a fresh water tank. Seven different experimental runs were performed by varying the density of the salinemixture in the lock and the bed roughness. Experiments were conducted in a Perspex flume, of horizontal bed and rectangular cross section, and recorded with aCCD camera. An image analysis techniquewas applied to visualize and characterize the current allowing thus the understanding of its general dynamics and, more specifically, of the current head dynamics.The temporal evolution of both head length and mass shows repeated stretching and breaking cycles: during the stretching phase, the head length and mass grow until reaching a limit, then the head becomes unstable and breaks. In the instants of break, the head aspect ratio shows a limit of 0.2 and the mass of the head is of the order of the initial mass in the lock. The average period of the herein called breaking events is seen to increase with bed roughness and the spatial periodicity of these events is seen to be approximately constant between runs. The rate of growth of the mass at the head is taken as a measure to assess entrainment and it is observed to occur at all stages of the current development. Entrainment rate at the head decreases in time suggesting this as a phenomenon ruled by local buoyancy and the similarity between runs shows independence from the initial reduced gravity and bed roughness.
Jian Wang, Olivier Schneider, Yiming Li, Yi Zhang, Aurelio Bay, Guido Haefeli, Christoph Frei, Frédéric Blanc, Tatsuya Nakada, Michel De Cian, Luca Pescatore, François Fleuret, Elena Graverini, Chitsanu Khurewathanakul, Renato Quagliani, Maria Vieites Diaz, Federico Betti, Andrea Merli, Aravindhan Venkateswaran, Luis Miguel Garcia Martin, Vitalii Lisovskyi, Sebastian Schulte, Veronica Sølund Kirsebom, Mingkui Wang, Zhirui Xu, Lei Zhang, Jessica Prisciandaro, Mark Tobin, Minh Tâm Tran, Niko Neufeld, Matthew Needham, Marc-Olivier Bettler, Greig Alan Cowan, Maurizio Martinelli, Vladislav Balagura, Donal Patrick Hill, Liang Sun, Pietro Marino, Mirco Dorigo, Xiaoxue Han, Liupan An, Federico Leo Redi, Plamen Hristov Hopchev, Thibaud Humair, Maxime Schubiger, Hang Yin, Guido Andreassi, Violaine Bellée, Olivier Göran Girard, Axel Kuonen, Preema Rennee Pais, Pavol Stefko, Tara Nanut, Maria Elena Stramaglia, Tommaso Colombo, Vladimir Macko, Guillaume Max Pietrzyk, Evgenii Shmanin, Dipanwita Dutta, Zheng Wang, Yi Wang, Hans Dijkstra, Gerhard Raven, Peter Clarke, Frédéric Teubert, Giovanni Carboni, Victor Coco, Adam Davis, Paolo Durante, Wenyu Zhang, Yu Zheng, Anton Petrov, Maxim Borisyak, Feng Jiang, Chen Chen, Zhipeng Tang