A 3-D numerical model for calculating flow in non-curvilinear coordinates was established in this article. The flow was simulated by solving the full Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with the RNG κ-ε turbulence model. In the horizontal x-y-plane, a boundary-fitted curvilinear co-ordinate system was adopted, while in the vertical direction, a σ co-ordinate transformation was used to represent the free surface and bed topography. The water level was determined by solving the 2-D Poisson equation derived from 2-D depth averaged momentum equations. The finite-volume method was used to discretize the equations and the SIMPLEC algorithm was applied to acquire the coupling of velocity and pressure. This model was applied to simulate the meandering channels and natural rivers, and the water levels and the velocities for all sections were given. By contrasting and analyzing, the agreement with measurements is generally good. The feasibility studies of simulating flow of the natural fiver have been conducted to demonstrate its applicability to hydraulic engineering research.
Aquatic vegetation plays an important role in the flow structure of open channels and thus changes the fate and the transport of sediment. This article proposes a three-dimensional turbulence model by introducing vegetation density and drag force into the control equations of water flow in the presence of vegetation. The model was used to calculate the impacts of submerged vegetation on the vertical profiles of longitudinal flow velocities, the changes of the depth-averaged flow velocities in a compound channel with emergent vegetation in the floodplain, the removal of suspended sediment from the channels by emergent vegetation, and the bed changes around and in a vegetated island. Numerical investigations show that aquatic vegetation retards flow in the vegetation zone, reduces the sediment transport capacity, and contributes to erosion on both sides of the vegetated island. Calculated results agree well with experimental results.
Using unstructured meshes provides great flexibility for modeling the flow in complex geomorphology of tidal creeks,barriers and islands,with refined grid resolution in regions of interest and not elsewhere.In this paper,an unstructured three-dimensional fully coupled wave-current model is developed.Firstly,a parallel,unstructured wave module is developed.Variations in wave properties are governed by a wave energy equation that includes wave-current interactions and dissipation representative of wave breaking.Then,the existing Finite-Volume Coastal Ocean Model(FVCOM) is modified to couple with the wave module.The couple procedure includes depth dependent wave radiation stress terms,Stokes drift,vertical transfer of wave-generated pressure transfer to the mean momentum equation,wave dissipation as a source term in the turbulence kinetic energy equation,and mean current advection and refraction of wave energy.Several applications are presented to evaluate the developed model.In particular the wind and wave-induced storm surge generated by Hurricane Katrina is investigated.The obtained results have been compared to the in situ measurements with respect to the wave heights and water level elevations revealing good accuracy of the model in reproduction of the investigated events.In a comparison to water level measurements at Dauphin Island,inclusion of the wave induced water level setup reduced the normalized root mean square error from 0.301 to 0.257 m and increased the correlation coefficient from 0.860 to 0.929.Several runs were carried out to analyze the effects of waves.The experiments show that among the processes that represent wave effects,radiation stress and wave-induced surface stress are more important than wave-induced bottom stress in affecting the water level.The Hurricane Katrina simulations showed the importance of the inclusion of the wave effects for the hindcast of the water levels during the storm surge.
The variations of current, salt intrusion and vertical stratification under different conditions of river flow and wind in the Oujiang River Estuary （ORE） were investigated in this article using the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Code （EFDC）. The model was verified against water level variation, velocity, and salinity variations in June 2005. The simulation results agreed well with measured data. Six sensitivity tests were conducted for different conditions of river flow and wind specified in the model. Model results show that salinity intrudes further upstream under scenarios with low flow and downriver local wind conditions. In contrast, the responses of salinity stratification to different environmental forcing functions were different in different portions of the estuary. Salinity stratification was enhanced under high flow condition. Model results also show that wind is not crucial to the salt intrusion and salinity stratification in the ORE.
