Young talent awarded

The prize was awarded by the International Association of Dredging Contractors during the 7th international summit on Coastal and Port Engineering in Developing Countries (COPEDEC), organised jointly by Dubai Municipality and the Brussels-based International Navigation Association. The event took place the last week of February in Dubai and was attended by over 1,000 marine engineers and scientists who discussed 226 papers.

Mr. Dastgheib, 29, presented a paper entitled Modelling Of Mega-Scale Equilibrium Condition of Tidal Basins In The Western Dutch Wadden Sea Using A Process-Based Model.

The paper analysed the equilibrium condition in tidal basins, especially in the Dutch Wadden Sea, which is a multi-basin tidal system. The equilibrium condition concept is more important when tidal basins import sediments from the adjacent coastline and its ebb-tidal delta. In the Dutch Wadden Sea the construction of the Afsluitdijk in 1932 affected the behavior of tidal basins, especially Marsdiep, to a large extent and disturbed its equilibrium condition.

In this study a process-based model (Delft3D) based on the shallow water equations is used to simulate the morphological changes of the Western Wadden Sea for a sufficiently long period for achieving equilibrium (2100 years). The main forcing which is included in the simulations is tidal forcing and different simulations with different initial conditions of the model are carried out.

The main parameters of tidal basins are calculated and checked with suggested empirical equilibrium relations in the literature. It is shown that such a process based model can simulate the morphological evolution of the tidal basins in the Western Dutch Wadden Sea and can model a stable (equilibrium) condition in these basins. This stable condition is however strongly dependent on the initial condition of the model as well as the forcing conditions.

Comparing all the results of the simulations in this study, it is concluded that the process -based model results show the morphological evolution towards empirical equilibrium equations suggested in the literature, mainly in line with the relations rather than in terms of exact coefficients.