Gravity currents (Q1612355)

The author studies a sudden release of a fixed volume of heavy fluid into another one, less dense, purely or in the presence of suspended material. The first currents are called compositionally driven currents, and the second ones particle-driven flows. These two kinds of gravity currents determine the structure of the paper: it is divided into two principal parts. The first one, ``Compositionally driven flows'', contains the presentation of the flow, hydraulic theory, weakly stratified hydraulics, shallow-layer models, hyperbolicity, interfacial asymptotics, and non-hydraulic effects. The second part ``Particle-driven flows'' contains a decoupled hydraulic model, turbulence modelling for effective settling velocity, and non-hydraulic effects of particle concentration.