Wave- and Current-Supported Gravity Flows: Insights from Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS)

Discoveries over the last three decades have shown that current- and wave-enhanced gravity flows (CWEGFs) are among the significant agents that carry substantial amounts of sediments across low-gradient shelves and thereby they are important elements of sediment source-to-sink. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) complement the existing field and laboratory experiments in that it offers unprecedented details of participating physical processes. Also, since the state-of-the-art optical and acoustic sensors are limited to measure 50 kg/m3 of suspended sediment concentration, CFD becomes the only means to evaluate the physical processes when the turbid layer is highly concentrated. In this presentation, the roles of wave- and alongshore current-induced turbulent boundary layers are investigated separately on across-shelf fine sediment transport. Turbulence-resolving simulations (Direct Numerical Simulations) that utilize a simplified Eulerian-Eulerian two-phase flow model are conducted. The results show that the sediment carrying capacity of wave boundary layers far exceeds the ones carried by along-shelf currents. The results also show that across-shelf velocity in wall units obeys a logarithmic profile, u+=α ln(z+)+β . However, this logarithmic velocity profile is far apart from the log-law and parameters α and β are dependent on sediment loading and the representative settling velocity of sediments. The key parameters that characterize CWEGFs, such as drag coefficient, Cd, and their variation are also calculated and are found to be close to the ones that are observed in the field experiments. It is also found that for wave boundary layers, drag coefficient increases as the wave orbital velocity increases. Further discussion on the details of the sediment-turbulence interaction is also warranted.