INFLUENCE OF ARTIFICIALLY GENERATED AIR BUBBLES ON A WAVE BREAKING

International audienceWe report experimental results on influence of air bubbles curtain on wave breaking. It was found that position of wave breaking point depends on bubble concentration in water. It was revealed that the effect of wave breaking is very sensitive to the concentration of air bubbles which are situated near free surface of water. We showed that small concentration of artificially created bubbles do not lead to additional dissipation of energy in surface waves but change sufficiently the position of breaking point. This phenomenon could synchronize the breaking of irregular surface waves in the ocean and lead to the generation of spatially inhomogeneous turbulence in the upper layer of the ocean