NearCoM Results

A new version of the Nearshore Community Model System (NearCoM-TVD) is utilized in this study to investigate hydrodynamics, sediment transport and morphological evolution of New River Inlet, NC. We focus on how the interaction between waves and strong tidal current near the inlet can change the pattern of wave and current fields and the resulting sediment transport. The advantages of using NearCoM-TVD for the study are: a) The coupling of SHORECIRC and SWAN is able to capture the important feature of the nonlinear wave-current interaction in nearshore region. b) the parallelized quasi-3D model is computationally efficient and allows modeling sediment transport and long term morphological evolution.

NearCoM integrates the wave model SWAN [Booij et al., 1999] and the quasi-3D nearshore circulation model SHORECIRC. The quasi-3D circulation model incorporates the effect of wave on the vertical structure of current [Svendsen and Putrevu 1994].

1) A new code of SHORECIRC applies a hybrid method combining the finite-volume and finite-difference TVD-type scheme [Toro, 2009]. The TVD-type scheme has been demonstrated to be stable and robust in modeling wave breaking and moving shorelines in the most recent development of the fully-nonlinear Boussinesq model [FUNWAVE-TVD, Shi et al., 2011a, 2011b].

2) SWAN is a spectral wave model which solves the wave action balance equation. The wave model SWAN was integrated with SHORECIRC and expand its applicability to inner shelf and river/inlet [Shi et al. 2011].

Some preliminary results can be found in Chen et al.(2012) presented at OS 2012.

Animations

current velocity (tide only)

current velocity (tide + wave)

Predictions at proposed measurement locations

under construction

Interesting Sites

NearCoM Official Website
NOPP Nearshore Project Homepage This page describes aspects of the NOPP project which supported the development of NearCoM, and which provides a complete list of project-related publications and developments.

latest update: 02 / 29 / 2012