Hydrodynamic and morphological challenges during the development of harbor extensions, alternative dredging strategies and sediment influx reducing measurements for the Flemish North Sea Ports are studied by the Maritime Access Division of the Flemish Government by using numerical tools. We assist in the development of the software needed to simulate currents and tidal propagation in seas, estuaries and rivers. The software developments are carried out within the framework of COHERENS, a 3-D hydrostatic free surface flow solver. The main contributions of the Coastal Engineering group consist in increasing the code's efficiency as much as possible. In this respect, the development of an implicit numerical scheme for the hydrodynamical equations has been an important achievement.

With the introduction of LES in turbulent combustion simulations, demanding time-accurate solutions, the generally applied pressure-correction schemes could no longer be used because of lack of stability. Many researchers report stability problems if local density ratios in the flow become too high. In many combustion applications, higher density ratios regularly appear (e.g. for methane-air combustion, a density ratio in the order of 10 can occur in the vicinity of the flame front).

We developed a pressure-correction algorithm which (1) conserves total mass, (2) conserves fuel elements mass and (3) is stable and robust, without the need for any (unphysical) underrelaxation. Above all, the scheme makes efficient time dependent calculations possible.

This research resulted in a PhD. More information, concerning the PhD can be found here.