Abstract
The Humen Estuary, one of the largest outlets of the Pearl River, is a long and wide tidal channel with a considerable tidal flow every year. Storm surges, always superposing spring tide, travel from the estuary and endanger the safety of people living around the river. However, little research has quantified the relationship between the hydraulic characteristics and the geometry features in this estuary. In this regard, an analytical model, combined with a numerical model, is applied to investigate the characteristics of tidal waves and surge propagations in the estuary. Given the geometric, topographic, and tidal parameters at the mouth of the estuary, the tidal damping and wave celerity can be computed. The numerical results were used to calibrate and verify the analytical model. The results indicate that the analytical model can describe the astronomical tidal dynamics very well in correspondence with the numerical results. However, the analytical model cannot predict the tide well when a tropical cyclone-induced surge is superimposed on the astronomical tide. The reason is that this model does not take the wind stress and the pressure depression into account. After reducing Manning’s coefficient, we found that the analytical results could be close to the numerical results. Finally, we analyzed the characteristics of the tidal wave in the Humen Estuary using the analytical solution and its parameters.
Highlights
Tidal waves are a major hydrodynamic factor that influences the flooding, ecosystems, transport, and morphological evolution in estuaries
In contrast to tidal waves in deep oceans, which are driven by astronomical forces with a high degree of predictability, waves propagating along estuaries tend to adjust their amplitude, celerity, and shape during interactions with topography, friction, and other secondary factors such as wind stress and runoff
Tidal wave propagation in an estuary is an interesting but difficult issue to solve because of the nonlinear interaction resulting from the complex estuarine boundary lines and variably shallow topography
Summary
Tidal waves are a major hydrodynamic factor that influences the flooding, ecosystems, transport, and morphological evolution in estuaries. To understand the mechanism of tidal wave propagation along an estuary, vast efforts have been made to induce and solve the estuary hydrodynamic model These works can be divided into two methods: analytical solutions and numerical simulations. Some previous numerical simulations have been performed [17,18], their results are not direct and clear enough to reflect the characteristics of how a certain controlling parameter affects other parameters Another question is whether Savenije’s analytical solution can be applied to the situation under the interaction of tides and surges during typhoon landfall. We apply Savenije’s analytical solution to the Humen Estuary in conjunction with numerical simulation results to describe and analyze the characteristics of the tidal wave in the Humen Estuary, Pearl River.
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