Realistic Applications of a Tidal 2d Two-Layer Shallow Water Model to the Strait of Gibraltar

This work deals with the numerical simulation of two-dimensional flows of stratified fluids through channels with irregular geometry. The fluid is supposed to be composed of two shallow layers of immiscible fluids of constant densities, and arbitrary bottom topographies are considered. Therefore, the equations to be solved are a coupled system composed of two bi-dimensional Shallow Water models with source terms involving depth function and coupling terms. The resulting 2D hyperbolic system of conservation law with source terms and non-conservative products is solved by means of Finite Volumes techniques on non-structured grids. Resulting schemes have been tested with analytical and asymptotic solutions (see [2]). The numerical scheme is applied to a realistic simulation of the of the flow through the Strait of Gibraltar. Initially a steady-state solution is obtained from a "lock-exchange" experiment. Then we use this solution to simulate a tidal experiment in the Strait where the main semidiurnal and diurnal tides are imposed as boundary conditions.