Modeling the interaction between flow and highly flexible aquatic vegetation

Aquatic vegetation has an important role in estuaries and rivers by acting as bed stabilizer, filter, food source, and nursing area. However, macrophyte populations worldwide are under high anthropogenic pressure. Protection and restoration efforts will benefit from more insight into the interaction between vegetation, currents, waves, and sediment transport. Most aquatic plants are very flexible, implying that their shape and hence their drag and turbulence production depend on the flow conditions. We have developed a numerical simulation model that describes this dynamic interaction between very flexible vegetation and a time‐varying flow, using the sea grass Zostera marina as an example. The model consists of two parts: an existing 1DV k ‐ɛ turbulence model simulating the flow combined with a new model simulating the bending of the plants, based on a force balance that takes account of both vegetation position and buoyancy. We validated this model using observations of positions of flexible plastic strips and of the forces they are subjected to, as well as hydrodynamic measurements. The model predicts important properties like the forces on plants, flow velocity profiles, and turbulence characteristics well. Although the validation data are limited, the results are sufficiently encouraging to consider our model to be of generic value in studying flow processes in fields of flexible vegetation.