Meeting Abstracts
Numerical Simulation of Oil Spills in Coastal Areas Using Shallow Water Equations in Generalized Coordinates
G. Novelli, I. Cuesta, FX Grau
URV
(Abstract received 05/11/2012 for session C)
ABSTRACT
The pollution generated by accidental marine oil spills can cause persistent ecological disasters and lead to serious social and economical damages. Numerical simulations are a valuable tool to make proper decisions in emergency situation or to plan response actions beforehand.
The main objective of this work was to improve SIMOIL, a computational model developed earlier at URV and capable of predicting the evaporation and spreading of massive oil spills in coastal areas.
Specifically, a new coastal current model, based on the resolution of the shallow water equations in generalised coordinates, has been developed and validated and then coupled to SIMOIL.
The model was specially designed to describe coastal oceanic flows over topography accounting
for Coriolis force, eddy viscosity, seabed friction and to couple with SIMOIL in domain with complex boundaries.
The equations have been discretized over generalised domains by means of finite differences of second order accuracy. The code was then implemented in FORTRAN.
The code has been validated extensively against numerical and experimental flow studies of the bibliography.
Finally, the new complete version of SIMOIL, coupling the shallow water model and the oil slick model, has been applied to the study of two accidental oil spills:
A massive leakage from the Repsol's floating dock in the port of Tarragona
The biggest oil spill ever occurred in the Mediterranean Sea: the 2006 Lebanon oil spill.
In both cases, the new version of SIMOIL, demonstrate more accurate predictions of the behaviour of the oil spill, specially for moderate winds with complex topography.