Modelling of small river deltas: the dependence of morphology on grain size and discharge

Abstract

We studied the dependence of the morphology of small river deltas on the grain size, the total discharge, and the slope of the deposits. We use Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods of numerical modelling. For all models we used the same initial geometry of the river valley and a portion of the lake. Our simulations show the expected dependence of the shape of our simulated small deltas on the grain size. Moreover, we find that the final type of delta could be characterized by the average slope in the region close to the delta front.