| dc.description.abstract | Accurate numerical simulations needed for responding to coastal oil spills require a fundamental understanding of tidal eddy-driven transport. Tidal eddies are commonly formed along barrier islands and shipping channels connecting bays/estuaries to the coast. The transport in and out of the bays/estuaries controlled by these eddies is critical for many barrier island coastlines across the United States. Understanding this major form of transport can assist response efforts to disasters, such as the Texas City Y spill. In this spill, a bulk carrier collided with an oil tanker spilling 168,000 gallons of oil in the Galveston Ship Channel and was eventually stranded along the coasts of Galveston and Matagorda island. In order to improve the understanding of these tidal eddies, a shallow water flume was designed and constructed at Texas A&M University. This flume was designed based on the non-dimensional parameter space needed to describe the dynamic similitude of the behavior of coastal tidal eddies. The flume was then used to conduct surface particle image velocimetry (PIV) experiments for a 52.7 cm wide channel at 2cm, 3cm, and 5cm water depth, where the velocity information of the eddies was recorded during 5 to 10 tidal periods at different flow rates. A method was developed for designing a shallow water flume within the critical parameter space needed for dynamic and geometric similitude. The newly designed flume was then tested and the hydrodynamic conditions present for the new design were analyzed and recorded for use in future experimentation. Experiments were conducted with similar parameters to other relevant research on shallow water starting jet vortices in larger facilities to compare the results of the design process to existing data sets.
The results confirm that the present experiments give dynamically similar results | en |
