Modeling Wave Attenuation With Rigid Vegetation Plants

Virtual Cylinder Model (VCM) was used to simulate flows over vegetation plants (cylinders) in coastal wetlands. VCM is capable of characterizing the flow field with a few plants as well as numerous plants with high efficiency and accuracy. Numerical results of flow over cylinders at a regular pattern are compared with Direct Numerical Simulations and at irregular patterns are presented with varied resolutions. VCM provides decent accuracy and efficiency without high resolution in tiny mesh. Results demonstrate that it is suitable for large-scale simulation of vegetation resilience to protect coastal wetlands from waves.