Energy dissipation when internal, ocean-type waves reflect from a solid boundary

Determining the energy flux of an internal wave from the experimentally measured velocity field was made possible by the work of Lee et al. (Lee et al., Phys. Fluids, 26, 2014). This method is used in our work to measure the amount of energy dissipated when internal waves reflect from sloping boundaries by comparing the incoming energy flux to the outgoing energy flux through a surface near to the reflection region. We also use numerical simulations of the Navier-Stokes equations in the Boussinesq limit where the energy flux is known from the pressure and velocity fields. There is good agreement between our experimental and numerical simulation data, and we find that there are high rates of energy dissipation during reflection process. We also find that there is a wave reflected back from the boundary towards the generation site, which has not been reported previously.