Analysis of silt interaction with water in an estuary

Water propagation and silt spreading over a silty seabed were studied and numerically analyzed. To this end, a multiphase flow model was employed based on the interMixingfoam solver in OpenFOAM. The influence of different silts on water over a shoreline was investigated with different parameters such as silt viscosity, silt density, and inlet-water velocity. The developed numerical model was applied to general water–silt interaction problems over a seabed; the main aspects studied were the water–silt interaction and the corresponding water–silt interface. The results showed that attenuation first increased, then decreased from soft to hard silts. Maximum attenuation was observed for silt3 (i.e., some-hard silt). Furthermore, the higher the inlet-water and inlet-silt speeds, the more the water and silt mixed. Consequently, the silt was uplifted. This model can also be used for the exploitation of low-permeability reservoirs such as shale gas.