Development and application of an oil spill model with wave–current interactions in coastal areas

The present paper focuses on developing a numerical oil spill model that incorporates the full three-dimensional wave–current interactions for a better representation of the spilled oil transport mechanics in complicated coastal environments. The incorporation of surface wave effects is not only imposing a traditional drag coefficient formulation at the free surface, but also the 3D momentum equations are adjusted to include the impact of the vertically dependent radiation stresses on the currents. Based on the current data from SELFE and wave data from SWAN, the oil spill model utilizes oil particle method to predict the trajectory of individual droplets and the oil concentration. Compared with the observations in Dalian New Port oil spill event, the developed model taking into account wave–current coupling administers to giving better conformity than the one without. The comparisons demonstrates that 3D radiation stress impacts the spill dynamics drastically near the sea surface and along the coastline, while having less impact in deeper water.