TITLE:
Current Circulation and Water Renewal Time in the Enclosed Marine Area of Pagasitikos Basin, Greece
AUTHORS:
George Bousbouras, Panagiotis Angelidis
KEYWORDS:
Fluid Dynamics Simulation, Current Circulation, Pagasitikos Basin, ELCOM
JOURNAL NAME:
Computational Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering,
Vol.13 No.3,
July
12,
2024
ABSTRACT: Greece boasts an impressive closed coastline stretching across 13,676 km, making it the largest in the Mediterranean basin and one of the largest in the world. Given the significant human activities that take place in coastal areas, understanding the behavior of the sea environment becomes crucial. In this study, we delve into the generation and movement of marine currents as well as the retention time and water age within the waters of Pagasitikos Sea inlet, Greece, through numerical simulation of hydrodynamic characteristics. The main examined points of the understudy region are the area of the port of Volos, the Trikeri channel where the ingress and egress of water from the Gulf takes place and the exchange of seawater through circulation of the Pagasitikos Gulf with the North Evian Gulf. In order to evaluate the results, they were compared with real field measurements and with simulation on a laboratory dummy of the same area. The computational simulation was performed with the ELCOM 2.2 numerical modeling tool and the AEM3D latest version and the main factors simulated are the tide, the consequence that Coriolis force, boundary conditions, the topography and bottom geometry of the bay and the actual meteorological conditions of a whole year.