Morphology is the dynamic interplay between changing bed levels and sediment transport. Waves and currents drive sediment transport; variations in sediment transport drive changes in bed levels which subsequently have influence on waves and currents.
Svašek Hydraulics has extensive experience in simulating and forecasting morphology (sediment transport and bed updates) at coasts, rivers, estuaries, and harbours. Our experience includes non-cohesive sediments, cohesive sediments, tidal flats, cross-shore and long-shore wave driven sediment transport at coasts and sedimentation inside harbour basins or approach channels. Svašek Hydraulics can also provide sediment measurements.
We offer expert judgement and quick 1D models, and for accurate morphological predictions we apply our in-house developed software FINEL or the open-source software XBeach.
FINEL is (online) coupled to SWAN for include wave driven sediment transport and the feedback of bed changes on waves. FINEL has dedicated sand, silt and coupled sand-silt interaction modules to handle morphology. Several state-of-the-art sediment transport formula are available. FINEL can simulate morphological development accurately for periods up to 100 year! FINEL can be applied in 3D, 2D and 1D modus. It uses unstructured grids to have sufficient detail in areas of interest with short calculation times. For latter purpose FINEL is highly parallelised for efficient fast calculations on our in-house computational HPC cluster.
XBeach includes hydrodynamic processes of short wave transformation (refraction, shoaling and breaking), long wave (infragravity wave) transformation (generation, propagation and dissipation), wave-induced setup and unsteady currents, as well as overwash and inundation. The morphodynamic processes include bed load and suspended sediment transport, bed update, dune face avalanching and breaching. Although XBeach is originally aimed at simulating short-term storm events with high beach and dune erosion, Svašek Hydraulics has applied XBeach successfully for long-term simulations. This is achieved by applying the XBeach model in a state-of-the-art morphological train, alternating between calm and storm conditions, and simulating both long and cross shore processes.
With our morphological analyses and simulations, we can provide an optimal coastal protection design or nourishment strategy, river morphology study or a dredging optimization for minimal sedimentation in a harbour or approach channel. We can also simulate sediment plume dispersion for example for environmental impact assessment.
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