UTILIZAÇÃO DA MODELAGEM COMPUTACIONAL PARA AVALIAR ...

ABSTRACT
Along coastal areas have suffered considerable environmental degradation caused
by increasing pressure on the natural marine resources. An important tool used to
support decision-making in environmental management of a water body is the
computational modeling of the hydrodynamic conditions of flow and water quality.
One of the most important physical phenomena for the hydrodynamics of estuaries is
the tide that spread from the ocean to estuarine regions, suffer distortions that can be
represented by non-linear growth of constituent compounds and harmonics of the
main constituents of the astronomical tide. The asymmetries in the tides cause
differences in the duration of the flood and ebb tide vertical, resulting in systems
where the current flood (or ebb tides) may dominate on the ebb (or floods). These
characteristics can be represented by the parameters a/h (tidal height / depth of the
channel) and Vs/Vc (volume of storage intertidal / channel volume in mean sea
level). Thus, we carried out computer simulations in this study, using the mechanism
of flooding and drying in porous media of SisBaHiA® in idealized estuary with the aim
of evaluating the influence of tidal flats in the dominance of chains. Tests showed no
presence of tidal flats, in which the phenomena of friction with the bed stand, tend to
be dominated by the flood. Already the presence of estuaries with tidal flats tend to
be dominated by the ebb. It was observed also that the asymmetry of the tides are
intensified when the tidal flats when the tide rise and penetrates into the head of the
estuary.
Keywords: Estuaries; Tidal Flats, Flooding and Drying; Asymmetry of Tides;
Dominance of Currents.
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