Wave induced flow and transport in sediment beds

The fate of contaminants in large water bodies is highly influenced by the transfer of flow and solutes across the water sediment interface. In this paper, an analytical model is presented where flow in both sediment bed and open channel is coupled at the interface through a boundary layer occupying the upper part of the sediment bed. The presence of this layer allows not only the capture of the inertia effects through a drag term in the generalized Darcy's equation, but also the specification of different soil parameters for the two porous zones. The flow is advective and driven by wave action along the water surface. The resulting system is solved for the pressure and flux in each sediment layer. The generated transport velocity fields are linked to a random walk simulation that is used to examine the trajectories of solute particles. Comparison of these trajectories against experimental tracer tests suggests a pattern very similar to the one attributed to the presence of surface mounds. The results clearly show the significance of the boundary layer and the drag term for soil with high permeability and the impact of both the thickness of the boundary layer and the length of the gravity wave relative to the depth of the water channel on the transport and exchange across the interface. The paper also examines the sensitivity of the mass exchange to the permeability of the two porous zones.