• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.18 no.6
• /
• pp.399-406
• /
• 2013

This paper describes a new simulation technique for advection-diffusion phenomena over the sea surface using the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), capable of predicting oil dispersion from tankers. The LBM is used to solve the pollutant transport problem within the framework of the ocean environment. The sea space is represented by the lattices, where each lattice has the information on oil transportation. Since dispersed oils (i.e., oil droplets) at sea are transported by convection due to waves, buoyancy, and turbulent diffusion, the conservation of mass and many physical oil transport rules were used in the prediction model. Since the LBM is modeled using the uniform lattices and simple rules, it can be easily accelerated by the parallel mechanism, for example, GPU-accelerated method. The proposed model using the LBM is used to simulate a simple pollution event with the oil pollutants of 10,000 kL. The simulation results indicate that the LBM method accelerated with the GPU is 6 times faster than that without the GPU.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.38 no.2
• /
• pp.64-73
• /
• 2024

Oil spills pose significant threats to marine ecosystems, human health, socioeconomic aspects, and coastal communities. Accurate real-time predictions of oil slick transport along coastlines are paramount for quick preparedness and response efforts. This study used an open-source OpenOil numerical model to simulate the fate and trajectories of oil slicks released during the 2007 Hebei Spirit accident along the Korean coasts. Six combinations of input parameters, derived from a five-day met-ocean dataset incorporating various hydrodynamic, meteorological, and wave models, were investigated to determine the input variables that lead to the most reasonable results. The predictive performance of each combination was evaluated quantitatively by comparing the dimensions and matching rates between the simulated and observed oil slicks extracted from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data on the ocean surface. The results show that the combination incorporating the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) for hydrodynamic parameters exhibited more substantial agreement with the observed spill areas than Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS), yielding up to 88% and 53% similarity, respectively, during a more than four-day oil transportation near Taean coasts. This study underscores the importance of integrating high-resolution met-ocean models into oil spill modeling efforts to enhance the predictive accuracy regarding oil spill dynamics and weathering processes.