Project Title: Practical morphological modelling of sand-mud mixtures in estuaries
Doctoral Candidate: Jowi MIRANDA
Project Description: This research project is the morphodynamic numerical modeling of sand-mud in estuaries. It focuses on the erosion processes of sand-mud. Specifically, how the type of mud affects the initiation of motion, erosion, and transport of sand-mud. Sand-mud is defined as the abiotic components of sediment: sand, silt, and clay. Sand is non-cohesive with a grain size diameter between 63 µm-2 mm. Mud is cohesive composed of two fine sediment fractions: silt and clay. Silt is apparently/pseudo cohesive with grain size diameter between 2-63 µm. Clay is cohesive with grain size diameter less than 2 µm. From the definition of sand-mud, the project seeks to investigate three research questions: How is the erosion threshold of sand- mud affected by the erosion processes of each sediment fraction? How does each sediment fraction alter sand-mud erosion rate and estuarine morphodynamics in medium- to long- term numerical modeling? How does the evolution of estuaries differ during sea level rise when erosion depends on the fractional distribution of each sediment component?