Development and application of an oil spill model with wave–current interactions in coastal areas

• Published in: Marine pollution bulletin Vol. 84; no. 1-2; pp. 213 - 224
• Main Authors: Guo, WeiJun, Hao, Yanni, Zhang, Li, Xu, Tiaojian, Ren, Xiaozhong, Cao, Feng, Wang, Shoudong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 15.07.2014; Elsevier
• Subjects: Animal and plant ecology; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Applied ecology; Biological and medical sciences; Ecotoxicology, biological effects of pollution; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Marine; Marine and brackish environment; Models, Theoretical; Oceans and Seas; Oil spill; Petroleum - analysis; Petroleum Pollution; Radiation stress; Sea water ecosystems; Seawater; Synecology; Unstructured mesh; Wave–current interactions; INW, China, People's Rep., Liaoning Prov., Dalian; Oil spill; Unstructured mesh; Wave–current interactions; Radiation stress; Marine environment; Interaction; Models; Wave-current interactions; Stress
• ISSN: 0025-326X; 1879-3363
• DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.05.009

•Numerical oil spill developed by incorporating wave–current interactions and applied to hindcasting the Dalian oil spill.•Numerical model results taking into wave–current coupling shows better conformity with the observed data.•Oil dispersion will be enhanced due to the gradient of surface wave radiation stress in the coastal waters. The present paper focuses on developing a numerical oil spill model that incorporates the full three-dimensional wave–current interactions for a better representation of the spilled oil transport mechanics in complicated coastal environments. The incorporation of surface wave effects is not only imposing a traditional drag coefficient formulation at the free surface, but also the 3D momentum equations are adjusted to include the impact of the vertically dependent radiation stresses on the currents. Based on the current data from SELFE and wave data from SWAN, the oil spill model utilizes oil particle method to predict the trajectory of individual droplets and the oil concentration. Compared with the observations in Dalian New Port oil spill event, the developed model taking into account wave–current coupling administers to giving better conformity than the one without. The comparisons demonstrates that 3D radiation stress impacts the spill dynamics drastically near the sea surface and along the coastline, while having less impact in deeper water.