Simulation of the drift and diffusion of marine oil spill under the effect of wind, current and tides

Abstract

Oil spill accidents occur in marine traffic accidents. Once the accidents happen, oil spill will drift and diffuse on the ocean as impacted by wind and tidal current, which has considerably impacted the work on wharfs and their surrounding environment. This study aimed to investigate the effect of wind, ocean current and tides on oil spill movement for the building of the drift and weathering models of oil particles to predict and assess the risks of oil spill on the ocean. In these models, the oil film drift algorithm considers the joint action of wind, ocean current, wave and density flow on oil spill. In this study, the fluid dynamic model was adopted to determine the drift motion generated by the tidal field, and the diffusion process was calculated with the random walk method. In addition, the random movement model of oil particles was employed for simulating the transport and weathering of the oil spill, as an attempt to simulate marine oil spill. Furthermore, the Ningbo port was taken as an example to obtain the numerical sum of the flow field obtained by the simulation, which can guide the prediction of oil spill risks near ports.