MODELING COARSE SAND TRANSPORT UNDER SKEWED OSCILLATORY FLOW USING A CFD-DEM APPROACH

Abstract

Onshore/offshore sediment transport in the nearshore is an important mechanism driving the evolution of coastal morphology. The so-called sheet flow is a transport regime, in which the flow forces are intense such that a large amount of transport occurs in a concentrated layer near the bed. Onshore transport is often associated with flow skewness/asymmetry. In the nearshore zone, due to the bottom slope and wave shoaling, the wave velocity tends be onshore skewed before breaking in the surf zone. For breaking waves, the velocity asymmetry (or acceleration skewness) may also play a key role in determining net sediment transport. Understanding the net sediment transport rate in response to wave skewness/asymmetry is fundamental to a better prediction of sediment transport in regional scale morphodynamic models. In this study, we used an Euler-Lagrange two-phase model to study sheet flow transport of coarse sand under oscillatory flows subject to velocity/acceleration skewness.