Particle resuspension and dispersal in offshore wind farms

This study explores seabed particle resuspension induced by the presence of a vertically-mounted circular cylinder of diameter D to assess potential impacts on surrounding marine ecosystems. A large eddy simulation (LES) with the dynamic Smagorinsky model was conducted in an L_x × L_y × L_z = 30D × 10D × 5D box-like domain with doubly periodic boundaries in the streamwise (x) and cross-flow (y) directions. The Reynolds number based on the oscillatory flow amplitude and the cylinder's diameter was set to 2200 and the Keulegan–Carpenter number (KC) was set to 6. A symmetric oscillatory flow was imposed to mimic tidal flow, with millions of point particles being injected throughout the flow cycle near the bottom boundary. The particles ranged in size from 100 microns to 1 mm. We considered cases with low sediment volume fraction such that the one way coupling is appropriate and where statistical overloading can be implemented to provide statistically relevant measures of particle trajectory.