Particle Resolving Fluid-Sediment Interaction

Introduction

Climate change leads to increased frequency and magnitude of flash flood events in rivers and of storm surges in coastal areas. Flash floods are associated with larger discharges and water levels, whereas storm surges are characterized by higher wave heights and water levels.

Consequences of Extreme Weather Events

These events have significant consequences for both rivers and coastlines, triggering a morphodynamic response. Resulting erosion and soil mechanical failures can result in severe damage to civil infrastructure and buildings.

Knowledge Gap

There is a knowledge gap that connects the hydraulic, hydrodynamic, and geotechnical aspects of environmental loading due to current, wave action, as well as sediment and soil response respectively. With the increased likelihood of extreme weather events, there is an urgent need to study coastal morphology and mitigation approaches from a multi-disciplinary physics-based perspective.

Interdisciplinary Challenge

Representing the interconnected processes of current, waves, sediment transport, and soil deformation constitutes an interdisciplinary challenge. In the current project, particle-based sediment transport models are created that take a significant step towards a realistic representation of these processes.

Bridging Disciplines

The missing link between the individual modules will be developed, bridging the confinements of the disciplines of hydraulic, coastal, and geotechnical engineering with heavy use of advanced computational fluid and solid mechanics.

Multi-Scale Numerical Framework

The multi-scale nature of extreme hydrodynamic events and their interaction with sediment and soil particle physics will be solved through a holistic multi-scale numerical framework.

Conclusion

The proposed research lays the foundation for taking a significant step in sediment transport research that is required for dealing with current and future challenges arising from climate change. Innovative solutions to extreme weather event impact in the coastal, estuarine, and riverine environments can be rapidly proposed and verified using the current numerical modeling strategy.