A wet/dry point treatment method of FVCOM, part I: stability experiments

• Published in: Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
• Main Authors: Chen, Changsheng, Qi, Jianhua, Liu, Hedong, Beardsley, Robert C., Lin, Huichan, Cowles, Geoffrey W.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: MDPI 2022
• Subjects: Ocean hydrodynamical model; Coastal modeling; Coastal flooding; Northwest Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/29480

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Chen, C., Qi, J., Liu, H., Beardsley, R., Lin, H., & Cowles, G. A wet/dry point treatment method of FVCOM, part I: stability experiments. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 10(7), (2022): 896, https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10070896. A 3-dimensional wet/dry point treatment method was developed for the unstructured-grid Finite-Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM). Analytical equations were derived to examine discretized errors that occurred during the flooding/drying process by the wet/dry point treatment for the flooding/drying process. Numerical experiments were carried out for an idealized estuary, including the inter-tidal zone. The model results show that if the ratio of internal to external mode time steps (Isplit) is appropriately selected, FVCOM was capable of simulating the flooding/drying process with sufficient accuracy to ensure the mass conservation. The up-bound limit of Isplit was restricted by the bathymetric slope of the inter-tidal zone, external mode time step, horizontal/vertical resolution, and amplitude of tidal forcing at the open boundary, as well as the thickness of the viscous layer specified in the model. Criteria for time steps via these parameters were derived from these experiments, which provide a helpful guide in selectingIsplit for applying FVCOM to realistic geometric estuaries. This research was funded by the Georgia Sea Grant College Program under grant numbers NA26RG0373 and NA66RG0282, the Georgia DNR grants 024409-01 and 026450-01, the NSF Georges Bank/Northwest Atlantic GLOBEC program under grant number NSF-OCE 02-27679, and the SMAST fishery program under the NASA grant number NAG 13-02042.