The fourth User meeting was hosted by Rijkswaterstaat in Utrecht, on 24 May 2024. Philippe, Laura and Maarten presented their work within the framework of Melody.

Philippe started with his work on the effects of storm events on sediment transport on the lower shoreface. He aims to obtain the hydrodynamics from the DCSM-FM model (Dutch Continental Shelf Model – Flexible Mesh), including wave-current interactions with the SWAN model. He and the users discussed about the region of application of the model, the buoy data for waves used to force the model, and on the different characteristics that can define a storm.

Laura showed her results on the effects of a sloping bed on sand wave characteristics. Her solution approach relies on a double expansion: in terms of the sand wave height, and the (small) slope of the background topography (e.g., the lower shoreface). This allows for a semi-analytical solution. So far, she has obtained results on the hydrodynamics over a sloping bed without sand waves, and plans to expand the solution procedure in order to include the effects of sand waves as well.

Maarten presented the process he had made during his first period of his MSc thesis project, supervised by Pieter, Jebbe and Wino Snip (TenneT). In two slides Maarten explained what the Non-Mobile Reference level is and what the importance of bathymetric datasets is. Maarten concluded his presentation with the yet to be executed simulations and hopes to have the first results ready in the upcoming weeks. He hopes that the insights will help improving the understanding of the Non-Mobile Reference level and with that reduce the societal costs of submarine cable burial.

Laura presented the results of the ongoing MSc thesis project of Carlos, supervised by Laura and Pieter. Carlos has been expanding the study of Laura on sand wave-induced form roughness from a 2DV to a 3D setting. Therefore, he is focusing on the effects of sand wave orientation with respect to the tidal flow on form roughness. His results show that both horizontal flow velocity components are affected differently by the presence of a sand wave field. Furthermore, oblique sand wave fields (angles between 45° and 60°) result in significantly larger form roughness values.

The next User meeting will be hosted by Witteveen+Bos in November. We are looking forward to it!