Internal tide generation at a continental shelf/slope junction: a comparison between theory and a laboratory experiment. Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans 9

Baines, P.G. and Fang, X.-H., 1985. Internal tide generation at a continental shelf/slope junction: a comparison between theory and a laboratory experiment. Dyn. Atmos. Oceans, 9: 297-374. Observations of internal tide generation over continental slopes in a laboratory experiment have been carrried out, with the objectives of making comparisons with linear generation theory and investigating its limitations. Both continuous and layered stratification have been considered. A measure of the amplitude of the barotropic tidal forcing (and hence of non-linearity) is given by the Froude Number F:uso/c*, where u,6 is the maximum barotropic tidal velocity at the shelf break, and c * is the long-wave speed of the lowest internal mode. For continuous stratification, good agreement was obtained for "steep " slopes (a/c>1, where a is the slope at the continental slope and c is the slope of the internal wave rays of tidal frequency), even for quite large amplitude motions (f < 1.6), and the upper limit of its quantitative usefulness was not reached. For "flat " slopes (a/c<1) reasonable agreemen