Sensitivity Study of the Effects of Wave-Induced Vertical Mixing on Vertical Exchange Processes

The hydrodynamic model COHERENS-SED, developed by the present authors through introducing wave-enhanced bottom stress, wave dependent surface drag coefficient, wave-induced surface mixing, SWAN to COHERENS, is modified to account for wave-induced vertical mixing. The COHERENS-SED model can also be used for one-dimensional, two-dimensional, three-dimensional current and salinity calculations. One-dimensional model and three-dimensional model are used to study the effects of the wave-induced vertical mixing. The horizontal current velocity profiles obtained by the model are in good agreement with the analytical velocity profiles under the same input conditions. Numerical results show that higher wave height would generally generate larger vertical eddy viscosity and lower horizontal velocity. The results for fresh water in Yellow River Delta show that the wave-induced vertical mixing increases the momentum of fresh water transferring ability downwards to seabed and salt water’s mixing with upper fresh water. Fresh water flume length is compressed considerably.