Explosive interaction of gravity-capillary triads as the initial stage of “bag-breakup” droplet generation mechanism at high winds

The present work is a theoretical study of the hydrodynamic instability of the water-air interface, the development of which may result in the “bag breakup” fragmentation. This phenomenon begins with the appearance of a small-scale elevation of the water surface, which increases and turns into a small liquid “sail” or “bag”, limited by a thicker rim, and finally bursts into splashes. According to the results of laboratory experiments [1]–[3], the “bag breakup” fragmentation is the most effective droplet generation mechanism at hurricane wind speeds.

We propose a hypothesis that the formation of the initial elevations of the water surface, which undergoes fragmentation, is caused by the hydrodynamic instability of disturbances of the wind drift current in the water. A weakly nonlinear stage of instability in the form of a resonant three-wave interaction has been studied. It has been discovered that the nonlinear resonant interaction of a triad of wind drift perturbations, of which one wave is directed along the flow, and the other two are directed at an angle to the flow, leads to an explosive increase of amplitudes as it was in [4]. Within the framework of the piecewise-continuous model of the drift current profile, the characteristic time and spatial scales of disturbances have been found and it has been shown that their characteristic dependences on the air friction velocity are consistent with the previously obtained experimental data.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by RFBR projects (19-35-90053, 19-05-00249) and the Foundation for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics “BASIS”.