Morphodynamic modelling of tidal networks and comparison with laboratory experiments

The Delft3D process-based model is adopted to investigate the formation and subsequent evolution of tidal networks. The model is set up to reproduce the controlled laboratory experiments performed by Stefanon et al. (2010). A simple sinusoidal tidal forcings is imposed over a highly schematized sandy barrier-inlet environment characterized by a single grain size and without any biological effect. This semplified setting minimizes the number of processes affecting the tidal network generation and evolution and ensures that the whole system is as trasparent as possible so that the model's capability of reproducing the complex morphodynamic interactions can be evaluated.