The behaviour of estuarine muds during tidal cycles - an experimental study and mathematical model

The erosion, transport, deposition and consolidation of cohesive sediment within estuarine or other water courses created a wide range of design, maintenance and management problems in, for example, ports, harbours and docks. All of these problems highlight the need for good methods for predicting the movement of cohesive sediment. At present, numerical models do exist which predict the moment of cohesive sediment (see Hydraulics Research, 1985 and Hayter and Mehta, 1986). However, the physical processes are generally represented by simple empirical algorithms. Hence, there is a need to improve the modelling of cohesive sediment behaviour through a more rigorous mathematical representation of the mud bed processes and laboratory tests in the mud carousel flume.