A numerical model for the transport of salinity in estuaries

Abstract

SUMMARYIn this paper, a numerical model for the simulation of the hydrodynamics and of the evolution of the salinity in shallow water estuaries is presented. This tool is intended to predict the possible effects of Civil Engineering public works and other human actions (dredging, building of docks, spillages, etc.) on the marine habitat, and to evaluate their environmental impact in areas with high productivity of fish and of seafood. The prediction of these effects is essential in the decision making about the different options that could be implemented.The mathematical model consists of two coupled systems of differential equations: the shallow water hydrodynamic equations (that describe the evolution of the depth and of the velocity field) and the shallow water advective-diffusive transport equation (that describes the evolution of the salinity level).Some important issues that must be taken into account are the effects of the tides (including that the seabed could be exposed), the volume of fresh water provided by the rivers and the effects of the winds. Thus, different types of boundary conditions are considered.The numerical model proposed for solving this problem is a second-order Taylor-Galerkin finite element formulation.The proposed approach is applied to a real case: the analysis of the possible effects of dredging Los Lombos del Ulla, a formation of sandbanks in the Arousa Estuary (Galicia, Spain).A number of simulations have been carried out to compare the actual salinity level with the predicted situation if the different dredging options were executed. Some of the obtained results are presented and discussed.

Modeling the impact of culture facilities on hydrodynamic and solute transport in marine aquaculture waters of the North Yellow Sea

“…The depth-averaged shallow water equations are obtained by integrating the Navier-Stokes equations over the flow depth. These equations include the continuity equation and momentum equations for depth-averaged free surface flows [28]. They are written as:…”

MRT-Lattice Boltzmann Model for Multilayer Shallow Water Flow

“…They have wide applications in hydraulic engineering [1][2][3] and coastal engineering [4], and can be used to study main physical phenomena of interest to scientists and engineers such as storm surges [5], tsunami and bore wave propagation [6], the stationary hydraulic jump, forces acting on off-shore structures, and river, reservoir and open channel flows [1,7]. The shallow water equations can also be coupled to transport equations to model pollutant transport [8], salinity and temperature [9], and sediment transport [6,10], which are important subjects in many industrial and environmental projects. More advanced depth-averaged models were developed for shear shallow water flows [11,12] and for coastal waves in the shoaling and surf zones [13,14].…”

Untitled

“…El cálculo fraccionario encuentra su aplicación en diferentes áreas, por ejemplo, se puede citar aplicaciones en viscoelasticidad, electrónica, reacciones químicas, mecánica cuántica, semiconductores, propagación de ondas electromagnéticas y materiales, fenómenos de transporte por conveccióndifusión, vertidos de contaminantes en ríos, almacenamiento geológico profundo de residuos nucleares, problemas en biología marina, intrusión de sal marina en un estuario, la predicción del movimiento de pesticidas y fertilizantes a través del suelo [51,29,16,62,30,31,26,5,39,20,36,50,1,33,24].…”