Hydrodynamic changes due to large seabed installations in coastal waters off west coast of India

Abstract

Offshore marine environment can very well be utilized for mass storage of liquids which are not harmful to that environment. Improper placement of large tanks on the seabed, to store large quantities of liquids, would adversely affect the hydrodynamics of adjoining environment. Thorough understanding on the hydrodynamics of the adjoining environment is thus required before and after placing such tanks so as to properly plan the placement of these large tanks. A two dimensional numerical hydrodynamic model is used to study influence of placing large number of tanks in a dynamic marine environment. Cylindrical tanks (5 m dia.) are arranged in three rows with 50 tanks placed in each row with their length (100 m) aligned perpendicular to the coast. These tanks cover an area of about 36000 m2 and are placed on seabed in water depths about 15 m. Hydrodynamic simulations carried out with tidal forcing for cases of (a) before and (b) after placement of tanks showed that current speeds increase up to 65% in the region where the tanks are placed compared to currents without placement of tanks. However, up to 85% increase in current speeds is observed in regions beyond the tanks. In this manuscript results of the effects on the hydrodynamics of a region due to placing large number of tanks in shallow waters are presented.