Recent Progress on Understanding and Modeling Sediment Transport in Coastal Environment

Abstract

We present a two-phase flow model for sand transport that uses a collisional theory and a k-ε fluid turbulence closure to model the sediment-phase stresses and fluid-phase stresses, respectively. This two-phase flow model also considers the interaction between fluid turbulence and sand particle motions. Model-data comparisons using data measured for oscillatory sheet flows in U-tubes and for open channel sheet flow demonstrate the model’s good predictive ability. Such a model is able to provide sediment transport information both in the near-bed region and throughout the water column. Finally, examples for the washout of a small heap of sand under unidirectional flows are shown.