A Comparative Hydrodynamic Characterization of the Flow Through Regular and Stochastically Generated Synthetic Coral Reefs Over Flat Topography

Abstract

Coral reefs are vital to marine ecosystems, supporting biodiversity and driving nutrient cycling. Despite significant research on the interaction between surface waves and natural or artificial reefs, the turbulent flow dynamics within coral canopies remain poorly understood due to their intricate geometries. This study addresses this knowledge gap using a turbulence-resolving computation-al framework based on the volume-penalizing immersed boundary method (vIBM). Comparing the serial, staggered, and stochastic arrangements of various coral roughness types we observe that massive corals and cylinders lead to a similar hydrodynamics response and the effect of dispersive stresses can introduce a large difference when stochastic coral reefs are considered. These observations highlight the importance of better understanding the hydrodynamics of complex coral reef geometries, emphasizing the need for further studies on this aspect of coral reef hydrodynamics.