My name is Tess Wegman and I am a PhD candidate working on work package 2.3 in SALTISolutions. I obtained both my bachelor and master degrees in Civil Engineering at Delft University of Technology. My motivation to study Civil Engineering in Delft was to construct the tallest building in the world in my future career. Over the course of my studies my interests shifted from structural engineering to fluid mechanics. I like the fact that many natural (fluid mechanical) processes can be described by mathematics. Due to my fascination of fluid mechanics I focused on the track of Hydraulic Engineering, with a specialization in Environmental Fluid Mechanics. During my master thesis project I focussed on the potential of wave-shaped geometrical bed features, which can generate internal waves, as a salt intrusion mitigation measure.
I very much enjoyed working on this topic, and in March 2021 I got the opportunity to continue the research on salt intrusion as a PhD in the SALTISolutions programme. I work at the Hydraulic Engineering department at Delft University of Technology, together with Julie Pietrzak, Alexander Horner-Devine and Henk Dijkstra. I enjoy being part of the SALTISolutions programme, because it offers great opportunities for collaborations with both professionals from industry and many of the other researchers within the programme.
The main focus of my research is to gain an insight into the effect of forcing conditions at the river mouth and the mixing by non-hydrostatic physics on salt intrusion. The research objectives are approached by means of an extensive field campaign. Part of the field work consists of ship surveys in the Rotterdam Waterway, in collaboration with the Port of Rotterdam. During these surveys we collect salinity, velocity and turbulence data over a full tidal cycle. In the summer of 2022 a longer deployment period of moored measurement instruments will take place, to investigate the influence of forcing conditions at the river mouth on salt intrusion. We have had the first two ship surveys in the Rotterdam Waterway, and we managed to collect very useful data. I am looking forward to the next days on the ship and of course the big field survey that is coming up in the summer!
Last modified: 06/09/2022