Rivers, estuaries and coasts each exhibit widely varied flow and/or wave conditions that influence sediment characteristics and transport rates as a combination of bed and suspended load. As sediment is eroded/scoured, transported and deposited bed morphological changes can result in feedback loops that influence flow behaviour. Some of these transport behaviours can be well represented with 2D models, others benefit from a 3D approach.

When compared to hydraulic or hydrodynamic modelling in isolation, the addition of sediment transport modelling can be a little daunting. Additional data requirements and techniques are required for model setup, simulation and model verification and these needs vary with environment and project application.

TUFLOW’s sediment transport module is a multiple fraction (mixed cohesive, non-cohesive, i.e. sands silts, clays and muds in the one model), multi-bed-layer sediment transport and coupled hydrodynamic-morphological model. It has been used extensively for the simulation of sediment transport in creeks, rivers, estuaries, coastal and ocean environments allowing:

• Sediment transport due to currents and/or wave driven processes
• Morphological evolution and feedback on hydrodynamics
• Multiple sediment fractions, including mixed cohesive and non-cohesive sediments (sands silts, clays and muds in the one model)
• Sediment exchange between the water column and seabed (deposition and erosion)
• Advection and diffusion of suspended sediment (2D or 3D)
• Flocculation and hindered settling
• Bed layer consolidation
• Bed load transport, bed slumping and armouring processes
• For 3D baroclinic simulations sediment can be taken into consideration to influence density.

The implementation of our sediment transport module allows the user a high level of control over sediment characteristics. Within a single model run, sediment fraction groups can be assigned as cohesive or non-cohesive. There is also the added flexibility of selecting a range of common sediment transport models/equations independently for each fraction.

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