FINEL3D animations

Thermal discharge

FINEL3D, which is still in development, has been used successfully to compute the dispersal of a thermal discharge from a cooling water system in a deep fjord in Norway.

The simulation shows a sequence of vertical cross sections of temperature and salinity distributions in a harbour basin, which is open to the right and closed to the left, resulting from a thermal discharge.

Halfway the computation an inflow of fresh water occurs which more or less blocks the free outflow of warm cooling water, leading to an intrusion layer of warm water in between a relatively salt layer near the bottom and a relatively fresh layer near the surface.