TY - JOUR
TI - Modeling of sea spray droplets in the ocean
AU - Zhu Jian-Bin
AU - Wan Zhan-Hong
AU - Wang Xiao-Chun
AU - Lu Lin
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2014
VL - 18
IS - 5
SP - 1577
EP - 1582
PT - Article
AB - Droplets are known to play an important role in momentum, heat, and moisture  transfer between the ocean and atmosphere. A lot of scholars and experts aim  to investigate the effects of droplets on the climate and make precise  forecast for hurricane conditions. So the profiles of droplets concentration  at different heights above the sea surface are important. For a better study  of the momentum and energy transport among the boundary layer, we also need  to know the distribution of droplets with different radii. After wave break,  with the coupled effects of inertia, gravity, wind updraught, and turbulent  mixing, droplets can be transported to certain heights above the sea surface.  In the present study, we develop a modified subgrid-scale flow field model  coupled with the large eddy simulation to investigate the profiles of spay  droplets concentration after wave break. The results in our simulation show  that, the distribution of the droplets with the same radii in vertical  direction is roughly Gaussian distribution, and the maximum appears at the  height nearly above the significant wave height. For different radii, the  concentration of droplets with larger radii can be higher than that of the  smaller ones at some heights. Since the droplets in our model only include  the spay droplets generated by wave break, the data will not be identical  with the measurement in the open ocean and laboratory, which include all the  kinds of droplets above the ocean.