UTFacultiesETDepartmentsCEMResearch groupsWater Engineering and ManagementResearchAirflow and sediment transport patterns across urbanized beaches

Airflow and sediment transport patterns across urbanized beaches

Type
PhD research

Duration
November 2018 till November 2022 

Persons involved:
Ir. Paran Pourteimouri (PhD student)
Prof. dr. S.J.M.H. Hulscher (First promotor)
Prof. dr. K.W. Wijnberg (Second promotor)
Dr. G.H.P Campmans (Daily supervisor) 

Funding
The project is funded by NWO and co-funded by RWS and HHNK 

Summary of the research
Coastal zones have always attracted a large number of people because of the resources and the recreations that they provide. This highly increasing population living along the coastline, increases the demands for construction of restaurants, beach houses and pavilions at the beach-dune interface. These structures block the wind flow and change the airflow patterns which in turn alter the sediment transport pathways and influence the aeolian sand dunes.

In this project, we aim to investigate the impacts that the buildings’ characteristics and their positioning at beaches can have on wind flow patterns and consequently on aeolian sediment transport and coastal dunes. Specifically, we are interested in building characteristics such as buildings’ dimension, geometry, elevation on poles, orientation and roughness as well as their positioning with respect to each other and to the dune.

For this purpose, a CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) based model using OpenFOAM was developed to solve the airflow around buildings and a sediment transport model will be implemented to predict sediment transport rates and erosion and deposition patterns around buildings.

Keywords
Airflow around buildings
Sediment transport
Coastal dunes
Computational Fluid Dynamics