Simulation of Water Circulation over a Model of a Submarine Canyon by Using FIC-FEM Numerical Model

Abstract

A set of numerical model experiments has been conducted to simulate the circulation driven by oscillatory forcing over a theoretical continental slope configuration used previously in laboratory experiments. The test case considered was the numerical simulation of the flow over a model of a submarine canyon, and the numerical model used in the analysis was a coastal ocean model version based on an adaptation of the finite-calculus–finite-element method (FIC-FEM) approach implemented in the commercial package Tdyn. Two cases were analyzed involving changes in fluid density. Structured and unstructured finite-element spatial discretizations were generated for the same study domain to compare the resulting velocity field with outputs from the laboratory experiments and to assess which mesh provided a better representation of the complex geometry of the channel model and the water circulation process. The comparison between the laboratory results from the reference article and the output of the numerical model showed good agreement in the structure and magnitude of the phase-averaged and residual velocity fields.