| Abstract: | Standing internal waves, so-called seiches, are ubiquitous in reservoirs and lakes. Although the stratification in such basin is often continuous, the modeling of seiches has been confined mostly to two-layer models. Such models are unable to give reliable insights into the vertical structure of the seiches, which might be crucial for the understanding of vertical mixing in natural water basins. To obtain this kind of information a two-dimensional computer model has been developed, which takes both continuous stratification and bottom topography into account. The results of this model are presented. The computed seiche modes reveal that (1) several large-scale modes can exist with similar eigenfrequencies, (2) the modes have a tendency to develop narrow jets and (3) only the lowest modes are strongly influenced by the bottom topography. |
