4. The Plunging of Hyperpycnal Plumes on Tilted Bed by Three-Dimensional Large-Eddy Simulations

Theoretical and experimental interest in transport and deposition of sediments from rivers to oceans has increased rapidly over the last two decades. The marine ecosystem is strongly affected by mixing at river mouths, with, for instance, anthropogenic actions like pollutant spreading. Particle-laden flows entering a lighter ambient fluid (hyperpycnal flows) can plunge at a sufficient depth, and their deposits might preserve a remarkable record across a variety of climatic and tectonic settings. Numerical simulations play an essential role in this context since they provide information on all flow variables for any point of time and space. This work offers valuable spatio-temporal information generated by turbulence-resolving 3D simulations of poly-disperse hyperpycnal plumes over a tilted bed. The simulations are performed with the high-order flow solver Xcompact3d, which solves the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations on a Cartesian mesh using high-order finite-difference schemes. Five cases are presented, with different values for flow discharge and sediment concentration at the inlet. A detailed comparison with experimental data and analytical models is already available in the literature. The main objective of this work is to present a new dataset that shows the entire three-dimensional spatio-temporal evolution of the plunge phenomenon and all the relevant quantities of interest.