Studying Wind Effect on the Hydrodynamic Behavior of Lock-Exchange Density Current

In the present study, the two-dimensional lock-exchange turbidity current under the influence of wind flow is modeled using open-source software. To solve this, the large eddy simulation method has been used in order to observe turbulent phenomena more accurately. By developing the two-phase solver of the software so that the equations of the volume of fluid method are coupled with the scalar equation of concentration, the three-phase problem is simulated as a phase of a mixture of dense fluid and pure water next to the air phase. The results show that an increase in wind speed reduces the buoyancy force driving the turbidity current and increases the entrainment, which means faster pollution of water areas. This increase in wind speed also increases the wall shear stress, with the difference that the amount of wall shear stress at low wind speeds is not significant. So this prevents a significant change in the deposition behavior of the current. Studying the current's sedimentation behavior, showed that at high wind speeds, the co-current wind flow corresponding to the turbidity current has more harmful effects than the reverse wind flow and its sediment accumulation is getting higher.