Observations made with the help of a movable-bed tank designed and ope
rated to freeze the motion of gravity current fronts indicate that bot
h the scale of the apparatus and the magnitude of the current Reynolds
number have a strong influence on mixing rates. Low mixing rates are
associated with fronts in relatively shallow fresh water depths and lo
w Reynolds numbers. Mixing rates increase more rapidly as the ratio of
current thickness to fresh water depth increases. For the deepest fre
sh water flow conditions, when scale effects can be expected to be neg
ligible, the dimensionless mixing rate is approximately equal to three
times the relative current thickness and has an upper limit of about
0.3. Lower mixing rates are observed as the current Reynolds number de
creases, suggesting that viscous effects can still exist even for deep
fresh water conditions. Application of the experimental results to es
timate some parameters of a hypothetical gravity current on the contin
ental shelf yield reasonable values. However, it is clear that, owing
to the scale and Reynolds number effects that might be present in labo
ratory experiments, particular care should be exercised when trying to
extrapolate results to gravity currents in nature.