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Natural Hazards 32: 239-255, 2004.

© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

239

A Breadth Averaged Numerical Model for

Suspended Sediment Transport in Hooghly Estuary,

East Coast of India

P. C. SINHA1, PRAGYA GULIANI1, G. K. JENA1, A. D. RAO1, S. K. DUBE2,

A. K. CHATTERJEE3 and TAD MURTY4

1Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi-110016, India;

2Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur-721302, India; 3Hydraulic Study Department, Calcutta

Port Trust, Kolkata-700001, India; 4Baird & Associates, 1145 Hunt Club Rd, Suite 1, Ottawa,

Ontario K1V 0Y3, Canada

(Received 13 July 2002; accepted 26 October 2002)

Abstract. Sedimentation is of vital concern in the conservation, development and utilization of our

soil and water resources. The suspended sediment in estuarine waters is hazardous to navigation in

estuaries, which have important ports and harbours. A breadth-averaged numerical model to study

circulation and sediment transport is presented in this paper. The model is applied to Hooghly estuary,

along the east coast of India. The model is fully non-linear and uses a semi-explicit finite difference

scheme to solve mass, momentum and advection diffusion equation for suspended sediments in a

vertical plane. The erosion and deposition have been computed by empirically developed source and

sink terms in the suspended sediment equation.

Key words: Turbulent kinetic energy, Hooghly estuary, suspended sediment transport, numerical

model,