| Fine sediment related problems in estuaries include shoaling in navigable waterways and water pollution. A two-dimensional (horizontal) fine, cohesive sediment transport model using the finite element method has been developed to predict the temporal and spatial variations of the depth-averaged suspended sediment concentrations in estuarial waters. The advection-dispersion equation with appropriate source/sink terms is solved by the Galerkin weighted residual method for the suspension concentration at each node. Contemporary laboratory and field evidence has been used to develop algorithms which describe the processes of erosion, dispersion, settling, deposition, bed formation and bed consolidation.;The model yields stable and converging solutions. A useful feature of the model is its ability to predict the influence of salinity on the rate of fine suspended sediment movement. Verification was carried out against results from a series of erosion-deposition experiments in the laboratory using kaolinite and a natural mud as the sediments. The model was applied under prototype conditions to simulate sedimentation in a marina basin and suspended sediment transport in a hypothetical canal in which both erosion and deposition occurred. |
