Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of Artificial Reefs

Background

Millions of cubic meters of ARs are being built around the world for fishery or resource enhancement, and their deployment will be a complex and contentious social issue (Sutton, 2007). ARs' scales and purposes vary greatly (e.g., small structures by individuals in artisanal fishing communities, complex systems of heavy modules for commercial seafood production, and experimentally based structures for the restoration of the ecosystem). Le Diréach et al. (2015) investigated the effect of AR size, material, and structure on attracting fish and discovered that the mean size and density of the target species tended to increase with AR size or volume. Baine (2001) examined 249 papers on ARs and discovered that 36 papers (14% of the total) emphasized the importance of design complexity as well as the configuration, size, volume, and area of the reef. To make AR management easier, these man-made structures have been classified into scales based on module, set, group, and complexity (Grove and Sonu, 1983), as illustrated in Fig.1. The combination of architectural complexity, module design, and module layout on the bottom is regarded as the key to AR effectiveness (Sherman, 2002). AR deployment models such as the intensively stacked deployment model, flatly concentrated deployment model, and flatly distributed deployment model can be used to place ARs in specific areas of the marine environment (Yoon et al., 2016). The sizes, shapes, and volumes of ARs vary from deployment to deployment in a series of deployments.

Figure 1.

Geometry and meshing of a man-made structure (module)