Projects

Modelling estuarine sand waves

We aim to unravel the inherent dynamics of estuarine sand waves. Being free instabilities of the coupled hydro-sediment system , they are a major source of vertical mixing in estuaries . Yet, they are poorly understood, due to the complexities of hydrodynamics (oscillatory with strong asymmetries, flow separation, stratified flows), bed composition (sand, mud) and role of biota and estuarine geometry. Specific questions:

• In the sand-only case, what are the mechanisms behind estuarine sandwave dynamics, both in the stage of formation and subsequent finite-amplitude regime?
• How does the presence of mud alter these dynamics?
• What are the effects of anthropogenic interventions (e.g., dredging operations), at the scale of the individual bed forms or the estuary’s geometry and vice versa?