Downdrift Port Siltation Adjacent to a River Mouth: Effects of Mesotidal Conditions and Typhoon
Publication: Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 149, Issue 2
Abstract
The Zhuoshui River has one of the highest sediment yields in the world. The riverine sediment may have been transported away from the river mouth by strong tidal currents and deposited in a navigational channel and a harbor basin south of the Zhuoshui River. This study describes the dispersal of riverine sediments in mesotidal conditions, including transport processes of sediments via river plumes, initial deposition, resuspension, and long-term net accumulation. Our results revealed that the distribution of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) and the transport process of the river plume was markedly modulated by tidal currents in a north–south direction. Under high-discharge conditions, energetic winds and ocean currents interrupted the offshore propagation of the sediment-laden river plume with a high SSC to the ocean. The plume, induced by typhoon floods, was either propagated northward due to the Coriolis effect or was deposited near the river mouth. The sediments deposited within the inner shelf were resuspended by intensive tidal currents and transported through southward residual circulations to the navigation channel south of the river mouth.
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Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge Drs. James T. Liu and Nobu Kobayashi for their suggestions. Funding was provided by Taiwan's Ministry of Science and Technology under the Grant Number MOST 110-2611-M-006-003. The authors also would like to thank the editor, associate editor and four anonymous reviewers for detailed feedback that contributed to the improvement of this manuscript.
Notation
The following symbols are used in this paper:
- C
- sediment concentration;
- Cn
- computed data;
- turbulent flux;
- Es,m
- mass flux of the surface erosion;
- E0,m
- bed erodibility constant;
- Hz
- thickness of the grid cell;
- m
- index for each sediment class that equals one through the number of classes;
- Mn
- measured data;
- s
- vertical direction;
- u
- mean component of velocity in the horizontal (x) direction;
- v
- mean component of velocity in the horizontal (y) direction;
- ws,m
- vertical settling velocity of the sediment (positive upward);
- molecular diffusivity;
- τce,m
- critical shear stress;
- τs,f
- given bed shear stress;
- Ω
- mean components of velocity in the vertical (s) direction; and
- ϕ
- porosity of the top-bed layer.
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Published In
Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 149 • Issue 2 • March 2023
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 15, 2022
Accepted: Oct 15, 2022
Published online: Dec 6, 2022
Published in print: Mar 1, 2023
Discussion open until: May 6, 2023
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