Observation and modelling of hydrodynamics and residence times in Bilbao Harbour (Northern Spain)

Observation and modelling of hydrodynamics and residence times in Bilbao Harbour (Northern Spain)

Spyropoulou, S.

Stive, M.J.F. (mentor)
Mestres, M. (mentor)

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Hydraulic Engineering

CoMEM - Coastal and Marine Engineering and Management

2009-06-01

This report contains the work of Stella Spyropoulou for the final MSc thesis for the Coastal and Marine Engineering and Management Erasmus Mundus Postgraduate diploma, with the help and supervision of the UPC (Universitat Polytechnica de Catalunya) staff Marc Mestres and Manel Grifoll. An effort is made in this thesis to identify dominating and driving factors of the water currents in the outer part of the Nervion Estuary located in the port of Bilbao area in Northern Spain. The findings of this work will assist, and is part of, a larger scale governmental project aiming to identify high risk scenarios and areas in the main ports of Spain and with a long term target to create detailed emergency plans in case of a pollution source in those ports. Real, raw campaign field data very recently obtained are used throughout this research, and a large part of this work was to make these raw data into useful, comprehensible set of graphs and figures. Several computer software are used for the simulation of the water velocities and the production of graphs, like the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) and Matlab. After having successfully identified the driving forces and converted the raw data into a final set of useful information, a closer observation is made in order to point out the effects of the different weather, tidal and seasonal conditions. The most important conclusions found are that the estuary, especially in the river mouth are that the dispersion of the fresh water is due to advection than diffusion, ruling out strong water movement due to turbulences because of density differences. Another important observation is the very strong effect of the wind during calm seas while this effect eliminated when waves are present. The main driving force of the water currents, as expected, is the tidal force and the water velocities follow the central axis of the estuary. Another part of the thesis was to numerically simulate the water movement. From these simulations it was found that the most prone to persistent pollution section is the inner area of the harbour (South-East), however the areas with the higher risk of polluting the estuary is on the North-West and along the central axis of the estuary. This work has opened up many more aspects of the application of hydrodynamics observation and modelling and finally a set of research exercises should be carried further in order to complement this report and apply the findings into more practical applications. At the end of this report, the author provides a set of possible further exercises and research ideas for this particular case study of the Bilbao Harbour.

residence time
water quality
circulation
Bilbao

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:de764b68-a183-4fb2-8f54-09c69cd049ec

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2009 Spyropoulou, S.