Author(s): David Kelly; Frederic Mann; Azin Lamei; Douglas Pender; Hans Bihs; Widar Wang; Gaurav Savant

Linked Author(s): Hans Bihs

Keywords: Nature-based; Waves; Defence; Mangroves; CFD; VRANS; Direct forcing

Abstract: Mangrove forests present a viable and sustainable nature-based alternative to conventional coastal engineering defense structures. They can help to protect communities and infrastructure from the waves and currents generated during tsunami and storm surge events. The numerical modelling of mangroves in a coastal context has typically focused on their simplified representation through macroscopic porosity-based approaches (in the context of Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) -CFD modelling) or crude representation through, case specific, bottom friction (in the context of reduced dimension non-linear shallow water (NLSW) modelling). More recently, certain investigators have begun to explore more physically justified, less ad hoc approaches to the parametrisation of mangroves in reduced dimension models, cf. Chen et al. (2021). With increased computational capacity better process-based modelling is becoming possible, both in terms of the representation of large numbers of mangroves as actual structures within a CFD model, as well as improved parametrisation within reduced dimension (RD) models. Thus, in the longer term, large scale RD numerical models that can better incorporate wave-structure interactions for nature-based features will provide a powerful, lowcost, and flexible tool for coastal management. The work presented here is considered as a first, essential, step towards achieving such models.

DOI:

Year: 2024