The role of idealized storms on the initial stages in sand wave formation: A numerical modeling study

Bingchen Liang, Zhenlu Wang*, Botao Xie, Guoxiang Wu, Zhiduo Yan, B.W. Borsje

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
42 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Sand waves are rhythmic bedforms observed in many shallow shelf seas. By adopting a process-based numerical morphodynamic model, Delft3D, the effect of the storm-related processes on the growth and migration of sand waves was studied systematically in this paper. In our model, the storm effect was included by adopting the shear stresses due to the nonlinear wave effect, wave-current interaction, and wind-driven current. A series of numerical experiments were performed, and it was found that accounting for the wave nonlinearity is important in predicting the growth rate. Moreover, the effect of wave-current interaction on sand wave growth and migration is significant. The asymmetric velocity of water particles induced by wave-current interaction leads to net sediment transport rates which resulted in the migration of sand waves. The wind-driven current effect can breach the symmetry of the tidal current and cause the migration of sand waves. In our specified cases, the effect of wind-driven current or wave action on the LFGM was not significant, while the combination of these two effects causes a larger wavelength of sand waves. The model results show that the storms influence sand wave dynamics in the formation stage significantly and are therefore important to account for in designing offshore engineering operations in sand wave fields.
Original languageEnglish
Article number112203
Number of pages15
JournalOcean engineering
Volume262
Early online date24 Aug 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Oct 2022

Keywords

  • 22/3 OA procedure
  • Sand waves
  • Delft3D
  • Wave nonlinearity
  • Wave-current interaction
  • Wind-driven current
  • Moprhodynamic modeling

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The role of idealized storms on the initial stages in sand wave formation: A numerical modeling study'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this