Over the last two decades, interest in the free-surface behaviour of gravity-driven shallow turbulent flows has increased considerably. It is believed that observation of free-surface behaviour can provide useful information about the hydrodynamic characteristics of the flow and enable remote retrieval of these characteristics to non-invasively and rapidly monitor river flows. At the current state the literature presents scattered knowledge and also exhibits non-uniformity in the terminology used. This paper is a review of the state-of-art of this area of research and was created with two objectives: to gather the information relevant to understand the linkages between the free-surface behaviour and underpinning hydrodynamic processes while using a uniform terminology, and to analyse the gaps in our knowledge of this critical topic.

Summary: A numerical model based on the smoothed particle hydrodynamics method is developed to simulate depth‐limited turbulent open channel flows over hydraulically rough beds. The 2D Lagrangian form of the Navier–Stokes equations is solved, in which a drag‐based formulation is used based on an effective roughness zone near the bed to account for the roughness effect of bed spheres and an improved sub‐particle‐scale model is applied to account for the effect of turbulence. The sub‐particle‐scale model is constructed based on the mixing‐length assumption rather than the standard Smagorinsky approach to compute the eddy‐viscosity. A robust in/out‐flow boundary technique is also proposed to achieve stable uniform flow conditions at the inlet and outlet boundaries where the flow characteristics are unknown. The model is applied to simulate uniform open channel flows over a rough bed composed of regular spheres and validated by experimental velocity data. To investigate the influence of the bed roughness on different flow conditions, data from 12 experimental tests with different bed slopes and uniform water depths are simulated, and a good agreement has been observed between the model and experimental results of the streamwise velocity and turbulent shear stress. This shows that both the roughness effect and flow turbulence should be addressed in order to simulate the correct mechanisms of turbulent flow over a rough bed boundary and that the presented smoothed particle hydrodynamics model accomplishes this successfully. © 2016 The Authors International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

This work presents new water surface elevation data including evidence of the spatial correlation of water surface waves generated in shallow water flows over a gravel bed without appreciable bed forms. Careful laboratory experiments have shown that these water surface waves are not well‐known gravity or capillary waves but are caused by a different physical phenomenon. In the flow conditions studied, the shear present in shallow flows generates flow structures, which rise and impact on the water‐air interface. It is shown that the spatial correlation function observed for these water surface waves can be approximated by the following analytical expression . The proposed approximation depends on the spatial correlation radius, σ_w, characteristic spatial period, L₀, and spatial lag, ρ. This approximation holds for all the hydraulic conditions examined in this study. It is shown that L₀ relates to the depth‐averaged flow velocity and carries information on the shape of the vertical velocity profile and bed roughness. It is also shown that σ_w is related to the hydraulic roughness and the flow Reynolds number.

This paper presents a novel method for measuring three-dimensional (3D) water surface dynamics in a partially filled pipe. The study on investigation of the 3D free surface dynamics in partially filled pipes is very limited. The method involves tinting the water white with titanium dioxide so that the water surface appears like a solid surface to image-based measuring systems. This method uses a high-resolution projector to project a stochastic pattern of light onto the water surface and uses two high-resolution cameras to capture the pattern on the deformed water surface. The 3D instantaneous water surface fluctuation can be computed from the images captured by the two cameras using a standard Digital Image Correlation algorithm. It is demonstrated that the surface dynamics parameters of turbulent flow in partially filled pipes, including surface fluctuations and surface velocity, can be measured using the projector, high-resolution cameras and DIC algorithm.